Track-by-Track... with Babehoven

introduction by tom johnson

track guide written by babehoven

The first thing we learn about New York duo Babehoven in the bio of their new – and third – album, I See You, I See Me, is that Maya Bon and Ryan Albert share their home with two blind cats, Trilobite and Zorza, and that said domestic life helped carve out the songs that make up their often-gorgeous new record.

Formed of fourteen new songs, the new record acts as something of a reset, a new chapter for the band. Though not drastically different in sound and shape to what's come before, the pair opted to reach outside of their familiar surroundings, working with engineers Sam Evian, Kevin Copeland, and Phil Weinrobe to help bring their latest work to life. Indeed, Weinrobe is also the album's co-producer and his much-feted techniques help give these songs a gratifyingly lived in tone and texture; torn edges that lend the whole thing a palpable sense of tenderness.

Those cats, though.

Their shared home, it's written, led to Maya and Ryan exploring ideas around a "parallax view" – in short, the ways in which we can all end up with drastically different outlooks even having lived through the same reality. Such explorations reveal themselves through varying ways across the new album, the songs here peeling apart the layers of relationships, communication; the ways we hold ourselves and the things we learn to let go of.

It all makes for a blustery, beautiful journey – and one that Maya and Ryan guide us all through via their track-by-track guide, which you can read below now while streaming the album right here...

You’re a Liar

This song is about wanting to trust and connect even in pain. It’s about saying your feelings plainly as they come to you; wishing for someone to be different and seeing that they never will be.

When You Look at Me

When you’re struggling and someone really sees you, it can feel like being put under a microscope, like the viewer is miles above you. You can’t really perceive them through the distortion of the glass, and you don’t know if you can trust them. It’s lonely even in the presence of others. We try to connect but we’re different elements; it’s as if I am the forest and you are the water around, below, inside of me, but we cannot fully connect.

Lasagna

Sometimes when you’re deeply intertwined, you’re so close you can’t really see one another. You want the other to break in two, to reveal what’s underneath. You keep yourself busy, you fill your day with tasks but the other person is waving in the wind all around you, you feel them everywhere. You feel small, stuck, and frantic all at once.

Monster

Hurt people hurt people. When you need someone most, often your worst sides of yourself come out around them. This song is about missed connections and an inability to meet in the middle, and the tenuous times we live in heightening the instability we all feel.

Blue Around You

Standing on a bridge seeing apartments illuminated around you, being understood by a friend who knows your story, witnessing someone pull their life together like tenderly tying a shoelace; these are moments where we find each other in the soup of it all, and choose to really see one another. I see the blue around you as if we carry the hard times we go through around and within us like a glow. Recording this live with one of our musical idols, Phil Weinrobe, at the Chicken Shack —surrounded by talented musicians and friends — was one of the best moments of my life. The energy in that room was captured in a way I'd never experienced before, from the fiddle solo to the vocal take to the tambourine Phil pointed to Nick Kinsey to pick up mid-song. Phil is a master of his craft and it was an honor to work with him to bring this song to life.

Something True

I wrote Something True in honor of a close friend who has struggled with addiction for many years. I visit her family home and walk through the places we’d spent time together. I think of her when I sleep in my bed, sending her love wherever she is. She will be something true, she will be something whole.

Jess Has a Place

Jess is a friend who always provides comfort and love. I wrote this song at a time when I thought maybe a change of scene could help reframe a challenging moment. I thought Jess’ place was a perfect metaphor for an open, loving, warm spot to go without judgement.

Am I in a Dream

Am I In A Dream came up after a friend's monthly dream circle — a monthly gathering of sharing dream worlds. The alternate ending was written when my hometown, Topanga Canyon, burned in 2025. Seeing photos of places I'd known and loved reduced to ash was like crumbling internally from halfway across the world. Ella Williams of Squirrel Flower, a songwriter and friend I'm deeply inspired by, became the perfect second voice for this song, which lives in the sliver between dream and nightmare.

Wave Has a Place

Wave is a song about loving someone who is cushioned from consequences, and the loneliness of witnessing that from the outside. It’s about comfort worn as armor, privilege as identity, demanding honesty from someone who refuses to really see anyone else’s perspective. It’s about yearning for a home to be safe but feeling that it’s an alligator nest.

Neck

I dreamt my father fell off a mountain on repeat — broke his neck, reversed back up, then fell again. He actually did fall hundreds of feet mountain climbing in Slovenia when I was very young. I'd never dreamt about it before, but the image was so haunting I woke up and it came out in song. The song is a synthesis of the loneliness of healing, rage that has nowhere clean to go, and the banality of filling out mental health forms trying to get somewhere better.

Beetle on the Scene

This song feels like dissociative reflections of connections. Passing through space, place, identity as if you’re bobbing along a tranquil, lukewarm sea.

Three Reds

Three Reds is inspired by a game we play on tour — we gain points by counting cars of the same color passing by. The song plays with synesthesia and the tension between concealment and exposure. Sitting with the idea that we are made of the same stuff as everything that came before us can feel like both a warning and a celebration at the same time.

Pelorus

This came from a scene in The Lord of the Rings that stuck me — Aragorn setting down his sword by a river, the battle is won, there's no one left to fight. It's an almost biblical image of surrender. It reminded me of tashlich, the Jewish tradition of standing by water and letting something go. The exhaustion of finally being safe is unfamiliar, and can be its own kind of threat. I named the song Pelorus for a river in the Lord of the Rings.