We/Or/Me

Days Outside of Time is the fourth full-length album by the Chicago-based outfit We/Or/Me—the musical project of the Irish-Persian songwriter, Bahhaj Taherzadeh. Coming eight years after 2016’s Everything Behind Us is a Dream, the record has all the hallmarks of a lost album. Recorded in large part in a cabin in Beacon, NY in the pre-pandemic with Will Stratton on production duties, the songs have an autumnal, dream-like quality. Stratton would later compose the beautiful string arrangements that adorn several of the songs before the project was completed in the isolation of lockdown. 

It was during the lockdown period that Taherzadeh would enlist the services of several musical luminaries whose contributions would put the finishing touches on the project. Joan Shelley adds her ethereal, otherworldly voice to Lights Over London; Rachel Grimes plays piano on the same song in her unmistakable, intuitive style; and Glen Hansard offers an inspired choral-like arrangement of his own layered vocal along with some gentle harmonium on Move with the Moon.

Lost somewhat in the Covid time-warp and the life events that so often hamper the best laid plans of part-time musicians, the project lay dormant for long stretches of time; however, its momentum was reignited by Taherzadeh’s daughters who collaborated to create the cover art—the final piece of what is an elegant meditation on the fleeting nature of life and the passage of time.