New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Babehoven will release their new EP, Nastavi, Calliope, next Friday, July 9th. Today, they share its third single, "Annie's Shoes," with a stunning accompanying video. Evocative of Arthur Russell's Love is Overtaking Me or Julia Jacklin's Crushing, Nastvai, Calliope balances meticulously between the universality of emotion and the particulars that crack you open, that you carry alone. In "Annie's Shoes," arpeggiated percussion cuts through hovering synth and acoustic guitar as Maya Bon sings: "I feel done with being someone // You think you can talk through // When I sit and think about it // I wonder why I'm here at all." The song explodes into a dance party at the end, celebrating life in all of its oddity. Bon elaborates: "'Annie's Shoes' is an exploration of a moment in time; waking up in the morning, putting on your friend's shoes while you eat leftover Thai food for breakfast, feeling all of the feelings of becoming an adult, processing losses from many facets, and missing people and pets you love dearly."
The stop-motion music video for "Annie's Shoes" was created by director and animator Phoebe Jane Hart. Visually inspired by the mystery and sensuality of deep sea flora and fauna, she created a world full of handmade sea dragons, and flowers galore. Each environment, color and composition was carefully created by assistant fabricator,
Zazie Ray Trapido. At 24-frames-per-second, the video came in at over 2800 photos, each prop slightly changed between frames to create the illusion of motion. Hart utilized a traditional animation technique used in Disney's Bambi, the multiplane camera. This means that the camera pointed to the ground sitting over glass shelves with various elements moving across the glass to create environment and depth.
Nastavi, Calliope is the follow-up to Demonstrating Visible Difference of Height (2020) and Yellow Has a Pretty Good Reputation (2021). Recorded by collaborator Ryan Albert in he and Bon's home studio, it flexes Bon's specific, poignant writing and lacquered DIY aesthetic. Nastavi, Calliope is largely motivated by Bon reconnecting with her father in Croatia after being apart for 16 years, immersing herself in her ancestral culture, and the passing of the beloved family dog, Calliope.
"The word 'calliope' means beautiful voice in Greek," explains Bon. "It is also the type of organ that is placed at the center of a merry-go-round to provide that very specific type of music; that's a calliope. The cyclical movement of the merry go round provides another element that I enjoyed including in this EP title; pain is cyclical, experiences are cyclical, and in a way we are constantly exploring new terrain while carrying our body memories with us that seem to go round and round and round in our heads." There is no containing grief, or rendering it sensible, or arranging it neatly, but Nastavi, Calliope lets us gaze into a fragment of it like a broken mirror - a sharp, incisive revelation.
