Writing of Babehoven‘s Demonstrating Visible Difference of Height back in 2020, we described how Maya Bon developed the bedroom pop style by drawing on various other genres and influences, “maintaining the closeness and immediacy of the former while transcending its limitations, creating a sound capable of taking on the challenge of such weighty themes.” After last year’s Nastavi, Calliope directed this sound towards the topics of grief and loss, Babehoven have returned with brand new EP, titled Sunk, on Double Double Whammy. It’s a release which continues the themes, but offers a different response to suffering.
On the surface, Sunk feels like an expression of anguish’s long tail. The weeks and months and years after a loss, when exhaustion sets in yet grief loses none of the its teeth. “You look like you’re tired,” goes ‘Getter Better’ in a typically weary moment. “I don’t know how I / got along before / somehow, I just keep going.”
With tiredness comes fatalism. The constant realisation that the future looks no more promising. That there’s plenty more shit coming down the line. “I’m thinking how can I plan a life in turn,” Bon sings on ‘The Way That Things Burn’, “when everything is hopeless?” And fatalism in the future comes with a wider pessimism too. As ‘Creature’ captures:
You’re standing tall, though you’re upside down
It’s a crisis
I don’t know how to love anymore
I don’t know what love is
But Sunk is not a record that is content to dwell on these worries. In fact, its central message is rather different, offering if not a solution to the multitude of problems then at least an able coping mechanism. “What would happen if, rather than constantly fighting against the immovable tides of unfixable things,” reads the EP’s press release, “[Bon] gave herself permission to stop struggling altogether?”
Closer ‘Twenty Dried Chilies’ collects all of these thoughts into one final communication, presenting the thesis of the EP with Babehoven’s signature blend of thought and emotion. A song about disconnecting from things as the existential weight of the present bears down upon us. “I’m at a loss at what happens in this world,” Bon sings. “It is a cruel sensation, remembering I am human / And I’m prone to accidents of heart.” Accidents increasing in frequency by the day. In the face of personal loss, our increasingly fractious and atomised society, and the existential threats of conflict and climate change, battling every loss can feel worthless. Why waste so much energy struggling against such a powerful current? Why cause so much distress? Better to still oneself, to drift to the bottom. To become sunk.
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Sunk it out now via Double Double Whammy and you can get it from the Babehoven Bandcamp page.
