Hudson, NY-based indie duo Babehoven — Maya Bon and Ryan Albert — have built a solid partnership over the past handful of years, with the duo releasing several EPs since 2018. Through those EPs, the duo’s work displays Bon’s emotionally incisive approach to songwriting that draws as much power from abstract poetry that asks the big questions, as specific, personal vignettes.
The duo’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Light Moving Time is slated for an October 28, 2022 release through Double Double Whammy. Interestingly, much like their previously released work, Light Moving Time is centered around lyrics that zoom in and out, inviting listeners to bring their own experiences to the album’s songs when Bon’s writing is decidedly cryptic — and to stew in the moments when she presents her entire heart on a platter.
Sonically, the album reportedly continues the duo’s reputation for material with a wide range of dynamics with the band pushing those sounds even further. The album features songs that seem to draw from country and 80s power ballads, indie folk and even shoegaze. But the album sees the Hudson-based duo utilizing Bon’s voice with a greater emotional impact.
Light Moving Time‘s latest single, album closer “Often” is a slow-burning, spectral track built around strummed guitar, gently accented percussion, twinkling keys and atmospheric synths paired with Bon’s vocal, which expresses heartache, grief, loss and resiliency within a turn of a phrase. While sonically bearing a resemblance to Mazzy Star, and rooted in a deeply personal experience of loss, the song is universal, as it focuses on something we’ve all experienced — and will experience many times over.
“‘Often’ is a song about grief, about holding love for a person I’ve lost, about trying to let go and find new paths for myself,” Babehoven’s Maya Bon. “This song changed my life when I wrote it and has provided clarity for me in times of chaos. I hope that, through sharing it, others will find in it comfort and clarity, too.”
Directed and shot by Kevin Prince, the accompanying video for “Often” is comprise of footage that Prince shot around the Hudson Valley and from footage shot on road trips that he has taken. The video loosely follows two characters — a man and a woman — through various moments in time, and with a hazy, heartbreaking nostalgia, full of the understanding that nothing lasts forever.
