Babehoven - Sunk (2022) Hi Res

Since starting Babehoven in Portland, Oregon in 2017, Maya Bon has shown herself to be a gifted heart-on-sleeve songwriter, using music to peel back the layers of her own experiences - sometimes sad, sometimes surreal, always vividly rendered - to reveal universal emotional truths hidden in the most intimately personal of details. On Babehoven's new EP, Sunk, Bon seeks to answer a seemingly simple yet ultimately life changing question: what would happen if, rather than constantly fighting against the immovable tides of unfixable things - broken relationships, a fractured society, a future that erodes daily in the face of climate change - she gave herself permission to stop struggling altogether. What beauty might life attain if the choice to give up - to become 'sunk' - was reframed as an act of self-care rather than one of defeat?

Sonically, Sunk heralds a new approach for Babehoven. 2020's Nastavi, Calliope, was a lush work of sonic exploration resulting in part from Bon and collaborator Ryan Albert getting their hands on a MIDI keyboard a friend had left behind in Philadelphia, where they were living at the time, while the naturalistic indie rock of Sunk was inspired by the economical sound of Elliott Smith's Either/Or. Bon and Ryan Albert would listen to the record while lying on the floor of the southern Vermont apartment where they were quarantined in the early days of 2020, 'fine tuning our ears and finding inspiration in the exceptional songwriting and recording quality,' says Bon. Sunk has a lean and unfussy sound centered around roughly strummed guitar and Bon's richly emotive vocals - not too perfect, but not overly lo-fi either.