As a former Upstate New Yorker, I love the Hudson Valley with all my heart. It is a respite from chaos, with any major city at least two hours away in any direction. It is perfect for the mind that seeks reflection, a retreat from distraction, a place where one can stare into the deep forests and clear lakes and grapple with their emotions.
This is the crux of arrival, the new record from Zahra, a native of Rochester, New York. Rochester is a fine city, albeit not Syracuse and certainly not the Big Apple, and yet it still has all the trappings of a metropolitan area that cloud the brain and cause most of its citizens to bottle up their emotions only to explode at Red Wings games and on the Thruway.
So Zahra went to a cabin in the Hudson Valley for a year to sift through experiences of strange love and grief, all while recording and self-producing arrival. Zahra performs all of the instruments and vocals on the record, blending layers of sung harmonies with arpeggiated guitars, lush pads, and natural sounds like birds chirping, tape hiss, and the breeze through the trees. The record is an indie blend, mixing bedroom pop with elements of folk and tape loop experimentation.
The result is a focused, introspective work, placing great importance on not just atmosphere but inspired moments within it. The title track, an instrumental, swells with joyful horns and strings with an underscore of discordant guitar work, summarizing the emotional arc of arrival. The first sung track, “on my mind”, has simple lyrics (“You are on my mind/wondering if I/should ask you if your day was all right”), but such simplicity, matched with looping instrumentation, evokes a picture of turning over a thought in your mind, unable to let go of it.
On “pj”, Zahra addresses unrequited love from the song’s subject: “PJ, are you on your way/I am making dinner/Please don’t make me into a saint/I want to be a sinner”. The theme of loss carries through to the end of the album, mourning the loss of important people in Zahra’s life. Some lyrical highlights:
- “ghost”: “Had a message that I never sent/Like a ghost stuck in my head/Too big of a hole to mend/Just a memory of a friend”
- “bloom”: “Waking up in an empty room/Feel the silence in my head begin to bloom/A flower opening”
- “ode (to a brother)”: “Nothing is the same/Time has changed it all/Always stay the same/Hoping that you call”
Perhaps the song that paints the best geographic picture of the album as a whole is “22”, referring to New York State Route 22, which runs from the outskirts of the Bronx along the eastern edge of the state through dairy farms and the Taconic and Berkshire mountains before ending near the Canadian border. On the song, Zahra sings “Drive down the 22/I think I’m missing you”, simply expressing the solemn experience of traveling down the two-lane rural road, mostly alone except for the occasional passing car or hiker. The road could act as a symbol for the mental space arrival evokes. Pathways wind through still vistas that seem untouched, but upon closer inspection, one can see footsteps in the dirt, like scars on skin, like fading memories.
To hear arrival from beginning to end is to take a trip through Zahra’s emotional journey while creating the record. It is common for folks to move their life to a secluded place for a long period of time in order to sort out their feelings. But often those reflections remain tucked away, private, unknown for the most part. On arrival, Zahra lays everything bare, without much embellishment, as gentle as a breeze blowing through the branches underneath a night sky no light would dare touch.
Written by Will Sisskind
