Babehoven, the indie-folk duo known for their ethereal melodies and introspective lyrics, is heading to Montreal this week for a show at La Sotterenea on May 10.
Ahead of the tour, we caught up with Maya Bon, the creative force behind the band, to chat about the making of their excellent new album, Water’s Here In You, camaraderie, collaboration and future plans.
So how’s life in Babehoven right now?
Life is really good. We’re currently planning, we’re leaving for a tour in a couple days, so I’m just in cleaning mode right now. Our live band members arrive tomorrow, so we’ll be practicing like crazy for a couple of days. But I’m currently like, there’s this cabinet back there that I have not cleaned out for like three years that I put all my art supplies in. I’m just going through one of those days where we’re just doing a bunch of things and getting all the merch prepped.
Ryan and I practiced for a long time this morning. So just little logistical things, tying all the boats before we leave.
The album has been out for a week as we speak. What has been the biggest surprise to you about the reaction so far?
Well, there has been a lot of immediate support for songs like “Lonely, Cold Seed” and “Millennia.” And those two songs are very interesting, brilliant, wonderful songs in my heart. And also I wasn’t sure how other people would feel about them. They’re not like the classic indie sound. They’re more experimental sounding and slower. And there’s a lot of like, especially in “Millennia,” spoken word and like off-rhythm things. It’s just felt good to have immediate support for songs like that. That feels really nice.
I hear you and Ryan (Albert) collaborated together a little bit more on this one. What was the reason behind doing that?
As most things go with creative work, we didn’t enter the new recording project for this last album expecting to collaborate in a new way. I had a body of work that I had written. I had like 25 songs written and ready to record by the time we started recording last winter. And Ryan was playing guitar around the house and I really liked the chords he was playing. And I often do like the chords Ryan plays, but I sometimes have wanted to keep that space for him so that I don’t come in and be like, can I write a song with those chords when he might want to write a song with those chords? So I’ve been a little bit cautious about that. And then this time around, I just asked like, hey, do you want to maybe write a song together with those chords? And “Chariot” popped out.
From there, we kind of slowly stopped working on the 25 songs that I’d already written. We just kept making new songs each day. He does manual labour in construction as well. So on the days that he’s not working, we try to really focus, through the winter especially. And so what we had expected was that we would focus on recording the songs that I’d already written, but we kept finding new songs. Like, “Birdseye” would pop out and we were like, well, we have to obviously record that now. It just kind of naturally, fluidly started happening. And it was cool.
We were in a difficult time in our lives actually during this recording process, and there were lots of big transitions. We live in this house and have been here for a while. We rented it with five other friends and through the winter, everyone moved out really quickly; not in a dramatic way, but just someone found another apartment that they wanted to move into, someone moved in with their partner. It just kind of happened. And so when I ended up in this house alone, we weren’t expecting that. We had to figure out lots of life shifts, financial shifts and like, can we make this work? Also, I was dealing with health issues and emotional stuff. So it was a big, challenging winter, and I actually think the collaborative songwriting process was a way that we really came together in a time that was actually very difficult.
So what does Ryan bring to it that you wouldn’t have without him?
So Ryan is a brilliant thinker about music. He’s more of like a musician, I would say, whereas I’m like a songwriter. Like I play music because I love to sing, right? Sometimes I sing in choirs. I played jazz bass all through elementary school and through college because I love to play music. I love to engage with other people, but I’ve never really focused on excelling at an instrument. My instrument is songwriting and my voice and I like to play guitar because it accompanies me. Whereas Ryan is a guitarist. He studied guitar. He’s really interested in the guitar. He’s really good at the bass. He knows all these interesting things and he studied music in school. I did not study music. I studied environmental studies. I’ve always tried to kind of keep music almost like at a distance in terms of… I don’t want to know too much. I’d rather just be playful about it and see what happens.
But it’s really helpful to have someone with real concrete knowledge incorporated in the songwriting because his chord choices, for example, are chords that now I know how to play because we’ve been playing them for a year now. But I would have never known to explore those chords, even though like a lot of the chords that I play, I just make it up. I’m like, “Oh, this sounds good.” And then I’ll play that. And so I would maybe eventually have somehow landed upon a similar chord structure, but to blend all these things together, Ryan really like… My Best Friend Needs, for example, that’s a song that’s really a weird… It’s quite a weird song chord structure wise and I love the way it sounds.
I think sometimes with songwriting, you can get stuck in a specific way of songwriting. And it was really inspiring to try a whole new approach. And I was the lyricist still; I’m a singer, and Ryan was the guitar… We both played guitar, we’d write chords, like the choruses, I’d be like, “We should go to this chord.” And then we would, and we’d kind of tweak things together. But it felt exciting to approach things with Ryan because he brings a very nuanced, delicate, but educated approach to music. He’s actually really quite good at being explorative with me, but he just knows more.
Something that I really like about our dynamic, especially, is that neither of us approaches it competitively. I know that can be hard with like bands, because of course you get your ego involved and you want to be right or you want to be better. And I think something that I’m really interested in is like, I don’t want to be better. I just want to play. I just want to explore and write a song. And Ryan doesn’t approach it as wanting to be better, but I’ve heard of the dynamic of needing to be like the right one. And I don’t really think there’s a right or wrong with music.
There’s a theme on this album of camaraderie. Where did that come from and when did that start in the process of making the album?
In terms of themes in my song in general, I don’t think about what I want the album to be about. I just write a bunch of songs, and then I make themes based on what I hear. So I would say the feeling of camaraderie that comes through in this album was definitely like a post narrative that I love to create about the songs. It’s always interesting to be like, “Well, what does this sound like?” And “What do these lyrics mean?” But that’s something I noticed about the album post.
At what point in the process do you think about where the songs are going to sit next to each other on the album?
Normally, the very end, we’ll listen through everything and explore what it could possibly be like. But there are certain songs, like we knew “Birdseye” was the start of the album. We also knew that “Cherry” came directly after “Chariot.” “Cherry” was actually the ending of “Chariot,” that we split in two. So that was necessary. I knew “Ella’s From Somewhere Else” was the last song on the album for sure.
The first time I listened to the record and that song came on, I thought to myself, “This must be the last song.”
Yeah, right. I like that culminating song feeling that you’re like, “Okay, this is the end of the album.” And yeah, I appreciate that you recognize that.
So you’re in Montreal on my birthday, May 10th, and then you have the rest of the tour, and then do you know what the rest of the year is looking like?
We’re going to Europe in the fall, which hasn’t fully been booked yet. So I don’t have specific dates other than Pitchfork London, which has been announced, which I’m really excited about. It’s our first time playing in Europe. And then we are, at some point this summer, going to be recording more music. We’re trying out different producers for the first time. Like Ryan and I co-produce our music, him being kind of a lead producer. And then I have ideas and co-produce with him. But we’ve never worked with anyone else. So we’ve been inspired to try exploring what that could look like.
One facet of that is that we are hopeful that this next record might have a little more of a budget so we can actually work with other people because it’s really expensive to work with producers. And then also we would just like to see what happens, to open up the possibilities a little bigger with other people’s ideas. So yeah, we’re going to be recording. And hopefully also just enjoying the summer. Like I live in Hudson, New York upstate, and it’s so beautiful. And it’s just starting to really pop off. Like I went swimming in the pond up our road two days ago. And I’m hoping to do that a lot, hang out with my cats and my dog, hike and eat really good food. Food is very, very high on my priority list and I love to cook. So our band, as I was saying, are coming tomorrow. And I have a whole menu that I’m making. So I’m excited to have the band come tomorrow.
This album feels like a good soundtrack to that kind of stuff. It’s just got that nice mellow earthy feel, and camaraderie is a theme. Maybe it’s not a soundtrack for you if you don’t want to listen to yourself too much. But I think for others, it would be.
Yeah, I think I might not want to. (laughs)
So good luck with the tour. Good luck with the record.
Thank you so much, and happy birthday.
Watch the full interview below:
“Water’s Here In You” is out now via Double Double Whammy
Share this :
