The full-length debut from the New York folk-rock duo addresses the nonlinear nature of healing with a gentle and deliberate touch.
In the fog of emotional turbulence, Babehoven’s Maya Bon holds onto everyday reminders that time moves on. Bon and her collaborator Ryan Albert explored the theme of healing earlier this year on Sunk, an EP that offered an insulated glimpse into grief and acceptance, narrated through suspended, patient songwriting. Their full-length debut, Light Moving Time, expands on Sunk’s musical and thematic foundations, addressing the often illogical and nonlinear nature of healing with a gentle and deliberate touch.
Blending folk and indie rock with the occasional glaze of shoegaze guitars, Babehoven ornament tender, consonant acoustics with subtle dissonance. Take “Do It Fast,” a track that touches on feelings of hopelessness. A free-moving, horn-like synth emerges in the background, accompanied at one point by what sounds like a taser sweeping the stereo range, and distortion overtakes Bon’s vocals as she sings about how she’s “been thinking about how a hurricane was named after you.” These cautiously unsettling features make it impossible to feel entirely comfortable while listening to Light Moving Time.
Even tracks that point toward hope like “I’m on Your Team” are lined with blue. The song begins with Bon’s vocals doubled by the guitar line, a moment of musical solidarity that embodies the concept of being alone but not lonely (or perhaps hiding it well). “Choosing pain when it’s clean/Learning how to be angry but not be mean,” she sings against a persistent guitar chug, suggesting a sense of personal responsibility that comes with time. Though Bon’s lyrics champion support systems and search for “a way out,” her wistful tone gives the song a melancholic air. The conflicted emotions reflect how trauma rarely disappears but continues to inform our lives in subtle ways; on time-halting closer “Often,” Bon speaks to it directly as a physical presence in the backseat of her car.
The pain of redefining our relationships to others threads through the record, like in uptempo standout “Stand It.” It’s a head-bobbing meditation on choosing distance from a loved one when it’s in your best interest: “I’d rather stand outside in the cold/Than walk the way back to my home,” Bon sings. “I love you, but I hate you anyway.” The following track, “Circles,” is its haunted afterimage, illustrating how walking away is easier said than done. Against processed vocals and reverb-heavy production that sounds like trying to stargaze at dusk, Bon sings, “I might be on my knees by sunrise/Begging for some way to stand.” Searching for a place to land, the single syllable of “I” wanders and winds like a pastoral flute.
Light Moving Time is especially evocative at its most expansive. On the highlight “Pockets,” Bon enhances lyrics like “You’re hoping that if there is a God/That they don’t search your pockets at heaven’s gate/And find the vices that drove us apart” with short melismas and sky-reaching notes. Her vocal range has chill-prompting potential, but more often it tends to stay within a certain radius. There are moments where the album’s circular melodies and chugging guitars feel too repetitive, like on “Break the Ice” and “June Phoenix” (which includes a rare wink at the audience: “I am trying to write something funny to get a good rating this time”). Light Moving Time could afford to lean more into dissonance. While the music can feel safe and overly reserved, Bon’s adventurous lyricism is what makes the record so lovely: at once diaristic and philosophical, disarming and inviting, introspective and far-reaching.
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