Tag: Babehoven

Babehoven gets dreamy with their new single – “Stand It.”

Photo by Felix Walworth

Last month, Hudson, NY-based band Babehoven announced their debut album, Light Moving Time, out October 28th on Double Double Whammy. Today, they present a new single/video, “Stand It.” There’s an incredible emotional intelligence across Light Moving Time, and this glows throughout “Stand It.” Maya Bon verbalizes an imperfect yet loving relationship that burns bright, but may no longer serve the people involved. Its sonics are coated with My Bloody Valentine’s wobbly shoegaze, as she sings: “I wish there’s something that I could say / I love you but I hate you anyway / I’d rather stand outside getting old / Then learn to love and let you go.” The glitchy, atmospheric accompanying video was made by Babehoven’s Ryan Albert. 

“As time moves forward, I feel the fractures deeper: home, bonds, semblances of familial care that slip away from me,” says Bon. “‘Stand It’ is about trying to push through the challenges to be there for one another, to call out for support, to sift through the losses and find the humanity within the dysfunction.”

Watch Babehoven’s Video for “Stand It”
Bon views light as one of life’s few fundamental truths. In times of pain, we often look to simple things we can rely on, and light is as reliable as they come. Light Moving Timerevolves around Bon’s view of life as a confusing, jarring, and kaleidoscopic experience filled with contradictions, loss, and change, so it’s no wonder Bon often looks to light — not so much for specific answers, but as a pillar of continuity and a marker of time. The album encompasses tributes to loved ones and the power of community, experiences of trauma, and explorations of changing relationships, with self-reflections scattered throughout. It’s less about how to deal with pain and more about how we all experience life as a simultaneously cruel, beautiful, and illogical beast — full of complex emotions and a perpetual sense of subjectivity that leaves us unsure of what’s real. But Bon is reassured by the fact that all of us are capable of generosity and a level of connection that’s impossible to articulate with words.

 Bon has built a solid partnership with her Albert, her musical collaborator producer, over the last few years, releasing several EPs since 2018. On their full-length, songs alternate seamlessly across styles – some have the wispy ambient calm of a Liz Harris track, another contains the plucky indie-folk warmth of Hovvdy, and lead single “I’m On Your Team” falls somewhere between a flowy country song and an ‘80s power ballad. Light Moving Time rests on lyrics that zoom in and out, inviting listeners to bring their own experiences to these songs when her writing is more cryptic and stew in the moments when Bon presents her entire heart on a platter.

Watch Babehoven’s Video for “I’m On Your Team”

Pre-order Light Moving Time

Babehoven Tour Dates
(new dates in bold)
Thu. Oct. 20 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s ^
Fri. Oct. 21 – Syracuse, NY @ Westcott Theater ^
Sat. Oct. 22 – Ithaca, NY @ Deep Dive ^
Sun. Oct. 23 – Buffalo, NY @ Rec Room ^
Thu. Oct. 27 – Catskill, NY @ Avalon Lounge
Sat. Oct. 29 – Allston, MA @ Tourist Trap
Sat. Nov. 5 – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool
Fri. Nov. 11 – Washington, DC @ DC9 *
Sat. Nov. 12 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s *
Wed. Nov. 16 – Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB *
Thu. Nov. 17 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison *
Fri. Nov. 18 – Windsor, ON @ Phog Lounge
Sat. Nov. 19 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop *
Sun. Nov. 20 – Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village *
Wed. Nov. 30 – San Francisco, CA @ Cafe du Nord *
Fri. Dec. 2 – Seattle, WA @ Barboza *
Sat. Dec. 3 – Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall *
Sat. Dec. 10 – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon

^w/ Mikaela Davis
*w/ Skullcrusher

Keep your mind open.

[I can’t stand it when you don’t subscribe.]

[Thanks to Jim and Jaycee at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Babehoven’s “Bad Week” is a good single.

Photo by Jessica Chappe

Babehoven is the nomadic project of Topanga, CA-raised Maya Bon. Today, she announces her Nastavi, Calliope EP, out July 9th, and presents its lead single, “Bad Week.”

Nastavi, Calliope is the follow-up to Demonstrating Visible Difference of Height (2020) and Yellow Has a Pretty Good Reputation (2021). Nastavi, Calliope was built after a cascade of losses, and is a vessel into which Bon poured two years of heartache, humor, and rage, then growth. It’s largely motivated by reconnecting with her father in Croatia after being apart for 16 years, immersing herself in her ancestral culture, and the passing of the beloved family dog, Calliope. Throughout the EP, Bon untangles universal emotions through specific experiences, poignant writing, and a lacquered DIY aesthetic.

Since its inception in 2017 when Bon was a college student in Portland, OR, Babehoven has spanned geographies—Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia— and now, the tiny town of Arlington, VT, where Bon and collaborator Ryan Albert recorded the Nastavi, Calliope EP in their home studio. Their newfound home gave the duo the space and freedom to transform the EP’s seven tracks into lush, fully-formed compositions. After Bon drafts a new piece (typically with vocals and guitar), the two parse through the track and deconstruct its instrumentals, later adding new elements to replace/embellish the existing sound. In Bon’s words, “we try to dismantle and recreate the song, creating an open space for the song to morph and grow as we explore.” The resulting EP is an instrumental layer cake, stacking drums, then bass, then guitar and vocals, and finally gilding them with unconventional
elements like bowed guitars and the reverb of an 80s karaoke machine.

In the EP’s stunning opener “Bad Week,” Bon’s vocals reach out from beyond like a late night phone call from a friend. “It’s been a bad week for so many weeks now,” she sings, her voice glowing over strums of guitar and shuffling percussion. “This song is a hand reached inward to the swelling and amorphous cavities of grief,” says Bon. “As time keeps moving forward, I have found that it can feel as if the ‘bad days’ keep going, growing into ‘bad weeks,’ ‘bad years,’ into new levels of struggle that are hard to move through. Though this realization can feel staggering, it can also feel like an honest admission to self: these times are very hard and yet I want to move forward, I want to feel, I want to grow. ‘Bad Week’ is my attempt to commit to
myself in these feelings.”

Evocative of Arthur Russell’s Love is Overtaking Me or Julia Jacklin’s Crushing, Nastavi, Calliope balances meticulously between the universality of emotion and the particulars that crack you open, that you carry alone. There is no containing grief, or rendering it sensible, or arranging it neatly, but Nastavi, Calliope lets us gaze into a fragment of it like a broken mirror—a sharp,
incisive revelation.

Bon elaborates on the EP’s title: “’Nastavi’ means ‘keep going’ in Croatian, a language which carries a lot of weight for me. I am half Croatian and I often dreamt of what Croatia might be like as a child; it felt like a fictitious land, an inaccessible place where a piece of me lived, like a dismembered limb found itself on the Croatian shores. ‘Calliope,’ the name of my childhood dog, means ‘beautiful voice’ in Greek.
It is also the type of organ that is placed at the center of a merry go round to provide that very specific type of music. The cyclical movement of the merry go round provides another element that I enjoyed including in this EP title; pain is cyclical, experiences are cyclical, and in a way we are constantly exploring new terrain while carrying our body memories with us that seem to go round and round and round in our heads.” – Maya Bon

Listen to Babehoven’s “Bad Week”

Pre-order Nastavi, Calliope EP

Nastavi, Calliope EP Tracklist

  1. Bad Week
  2. Crossword
  3. A Star
  4. Annie’s Shoes
  5. Orange Tree
  6. Like Artists Making Offerings
  7. Alt. Lena

Keep your mind open.

[I’ll have a bad week if you don’t subscribe.]

[Thanks to Jaycee at Pitch Perfect PR.]