Q&A: Maya Bon of Babehoven Discusses Creating Her Debut Album ‘Light Moving Time’
A FRESH TAKE ON FAMILIAL LOSS, GROWTH, AND REFLECTION — Babehoven’s Light Moving Time is one of the most original and emotional albums of 2022. Maya Bon, one half of the duo, is a perfect example of the honest songwriter, and musical partner Ryan Albert is an experimenter in his production. Together, they perfectly compliment each other in creating raw, unique songs.
Released in October, Light Moving Time is the second major project the band released in 2022, following their EP, Sunk, a story of acceptance and constantly changing relationships, which came out in March. Both are beautiful — perfect for long drives or reflecting about yourself on your living room floor.
Read below to learn more about the creation of Light Moving Time, from its themes to its delightfully bizarre album cover.
LUNA: How are you doing? How does it feel to be releasing Light Moving Time?
BON: I’m doing very well, and I feel elated about having the album coming out.
LUNA: Can you talk a bit about some of the album’s themes?
BON: For my music, usually some major themes are familial loss. That permeates through every song, I would say, but there are also broader strokes that happen in this album. For example, the song “Marion” is about a housemate of mine who brings a lot of joy into my life and I wanted to write a song about her, to honor someone. “I’m On Your Team” is about dedicating myself to writing a song about community support and chosen family and wanting to find a way to write almost like a prayer for someone who might need it. It's not really even about me; it’s just hoping for people to have support when they need it. “Do It Fast” is a song that feels different in the sense that it talks about quarantine life for me, as well as isolation. It asks big questions about what I'm doing with my life and what I'm doing alive in general. I hit a deer with my car, and that’s the big climax of the center of the song, along with questioning. I feel like there are all of these signs that life is just so hard. “Pockets” is a romantic song. Besides those themes, it’s mostly themes of family, self-care, renewal, growth, reflection, and loss.
LUNA: What were some new elements you experimented with creating this album, compared to previous projects?
BON: It was recorded the same way as usual — Ryan and I recorded them in our bedroom. One song that’s different from the songs we’ve done before is “I’m On Your Team” because we intentionally tried to make it sound like some ’90s Roy Orbison recordings, which I thought was really successful and fun. I think that this album isn’t really different from anything else we’ve ever done — it’s just its own unique version of what we continue to do. I’ll write a song and then Ryan and I will go into warp speed brain mode of fully taking it apart and putting it back together. He's very good at exploring. “Do It Fast” is an example of a song where I think the production of it is masterful. I think Ryan’s biggest gift that he brings to the project is really knowing how to fluff up and explore the parameters of what a song can be.
LUNA: What were some challenges behind creating Light Moving Time and some favorite parts of the process?
BON: We live with a lot of people and we live in an old wooden house, so some of the challenges are being like, “Hey we’re recording. We’re gonna make a bunch of noise and you can’t make any noise,” which is an annoying thing to do. Luckily we live with people we’re close with and everyone’s very understanding, but it is hard to record out of your bedroom when you live in a big house with a lot of people. Other challenges are always just figuring out what a song wants to be — that can take a lot of energy and time and it can be disheartening. You’ll go down these rabbit holes where sometimes it’s just not it. There were some songs we didn’t add to the album because we worked on them a lot and they just didn’t feel right, and other songs we left as demos because they were just done.
A favorite part was making “Often” — I think it’s the best song I’ve ever written. I wrote it while we were recording and we recorded it the next day. We just left it as the demo and added a little bit of piano and Ryan playing the cymbals on one part. That song is an example of what songwriting can be for me. It changed my life when I wrote it, and I feel a lot of gratitude because I don't necessarily feel ownership over the songs that I write. They feel like they come through me. Not to get too spiritual about it, but I feel like a vessel versus a creator sometimes. Some songs I feel like I really worked at, but a lot of them just kind of come out. “Often” was one of those that came out, and it really just changed the course of my life. A lot of decisions I've made have been supported and carressed through that song. So that is definitely special.
Album art by Danielle Norris
LUNA: Can you talk a bit about the album cover and the meaning behind the title, Light Moving Time?
BON: The album cover was painted by my friend Danielle Norris, who is local — she lives in the Hudson Valley. She’s a painter who plays with surrealism and hyperrealism in a way that I love and is just profound. She’s also around my age, and it’s so cool to see someone’s craft become so honed-in and perfected. I’m really inspired by her work. I bought one of her paintings when I first moved to Hudson a couple years ago and she was like, “Thank you for your support — if you ever want me to make album art for you, just as a thank you for buying one of my paintings, I would love to.” I was like, “What? That's not how that works. I would love to pay you,” and she would not take any money or anything. She wanted to give it as a gift. That was an amazing situation, to be able to collaborate in a way where she just wanted to make this piece for us. We came up with the whole concept together. My friend Jess photographed me in that position with the outfit that I knew I wanted to wear. I knew what I wanted the carpet texture and color and pattern to be and Danielle and I created it together, with Danielle obviously being the crafts person doing the actual painting.
It turned out so magnificent, which was interesting because I created the name Light Moving Time long before Danielle and I had even talked about it. The name came from the song “June Phoenix”: I say the line “light moving time,” and I liked that phrase a lot. I think it’s so true. There’s not a lot left to it; it’s just that is what moves time. The sun in the most broad stroke perspective is creating this daylight-nighttime measurement that we use to understand our time with. On top of that, at the end of the day the most consistent thing that we can really rely upon is that we experience light. We see it, and our whole experience of being alive is based around it, our food… I mean, everything. Light is everything. I was thinking about that as a phrase. I don’t write very consciously a lot of the time, so that just came out and I was interested by it. I thought it was a good album title, especially because when we’re talking about grief and loss and pain — that struggle, time is all we have to create a foundation of meaning around anything, so it felt very right. When I compiled that with the album art it was like, “Okay, obviously that’s what this means.” I’d written “light moving time” as a phrase, but I hadn’t really thought of it being the album title. Once the album art was done and I thought of names, I put those together and it just made so much sense.
LUNA: What made you decide to have “I’m On Your Team” be your lead single and video feature? How was it creating the music video?
BON: I think we all knew — we being the label team, our manager, and Ryan and me — that it had to be the lead single. It’s just so good; it’s so fresh and hopeful and catchy. My voice sounds so good and the production sounds so good. There were just so many factors involved that were like, “Okay, this is a hit. We have to lead with this song.” It’s very glossy — we recorded it in our room but it’s a clean sounding recording, which made it feel like the one that we could do. That’s the only video that we had a budget for, the label paid for it. Making the video was really fun. We recorded it with a friend who had a friend with a really fancy video camera. That was exciting — it was just cool to do something very hi-fi, which is so not what we’ve ever done. I edited it, and I love editing so it was fun to work with the footage. I feel very proud of that video. It just works and is a good fit for the song, I think.
LUNA: What are some of your favorite songs or musicians at the moment (or just in general)?
BON: Great question. I’ve been really liking Alice Phoebe Lou — I love her songwriting and she does it really well, and I love her voice. I love Big Thief, I love Grouper. There are so many good artists right now. I love Courtney Marie Andrews — she was a big inspiration for “I'm On Your Team” as well. I really like Hand Habits, Julia Jacklin, and MJ Lenderman. It was really fun to tour with Horse Jumper of Love. I like their live set a lot, and I think that their latest album is a masterpiece. I could go on and on, but there’s so many good people making music right now.
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