Little Moon // Dear Divine LP [COLOR] / CD

アメリカ・ユタのフォーク作家Little Moonが、2024年10月に同国インディアナのインディーレーベルJoyful Noise Recordingsからリリースしたアルバムです。

インディーフォーク12曲を収録。LPはクリーム盤です。

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Available on 12" moon white vinyl or CD in digipack.

Tracklist:

1. we fall in our sleep
2. now
3. wonder eye
4. messy love
5. for you
6. holy and sweet
7. blue
8. kind, kind home
9. give you flowers
10. eighteen parts
11. bashful lovers
12. to be a god

Text excerpt by Joyful Noise:

"All her life, Emma Hardyman has wrestled with contradictions. After all, she was practically rendered a living, breathing contradiction the moment she was born into her half-Peruvian, half-white working-class Mormon family. Hardyman never quite fit in, often feeling ostracized no matter who she interacted with, and understandably found refuge in the arts—but even the way she obtained one of her unique talents feels contradictory. As children of musical parents, she and her siblings poked fun at the vocal warmups their father would teach his students, but amidst these jokes, one brother frequently challenged Hardyman to sing above the piano’s highest note, unwittingly helping to shape her gorgeous, unusually high vocal range. She was also homeschooled and the youngest of seven, which fueled her nervousness and social anxiety, so when encountering stressful situations, she often sang church hymns to herself, leaning into absurdity when faced with fear.

In young adulthood, Hardyman felt increasingly disillusioned with Mormonism’s righteous black-and-white thinking, as well as its exclusionary elitism, and decided to leave the church. But she also acknowledged that the institution’s all-or-nothing philosophy had become a part of her, resulting in a considerable test of grace and unlearning. Throughout that process, she began to realize that those parts of her weren’t universally harmful, and she started to ponder what she could lose by denying certain aspects of herself. Hardyman also felt drawn to the ways mythology, spirituality, science and imagination give permission to revel in the beauty of paradoxes and regular introspection, and she now proudly relishes her role as a thoroughly contradictory being.

As the singer-songwriter and visionary behind Little Moon, the Provo, Utah-based avant-folk project, Hardyman uses music as an outlet to illuminate, intertwine and contort contradictions of all kinds. Following her self-released 2020 debut LP 'Unphased', Hardyman set out to write a romantic album about her newlywed husband Nathan, but the universe had other plans. After Nathan’s mother tragically passed away—a loss made more difficult by the fact that he had just informed her of his plans to exit the church—Hardyman recalibrated her vision and started work on a love-as-grief, grief-as-love album titled 'Dear Divine'.

But Nathan is still weaved into the DNA of this LP, contributing vocals and guitar, in addition to a co-write on “wonder eye,” the explosive, ornately layered folk-pop song that won them the Tiny Desk Contest. Their relationship is also explored in Hardyman's mercurial vignettes, which ruminate on what it means to love deeply while also navigating your own insecurities and balancing autonomy with vulnerability. In this context, it becomes clear just how much love and grief have in common: the natural desire to romanticize, a yearning for a home-like calm and an urge to make sense of the inherently nonsensical. Affecting and chaotic, 'Dear Divine' serves as a mirror for the darkest parts of ourselves, allowing us to examine our ego—not to dismantle it, but to better understand how we love, process adversity and move through the world..."

Artist : Little Moon

Label : Joyful Noise Recordings

CAT No : JNR477