Little Moon (Tiny Desk Contest Winner) Shares 'messy love' Single
Her sophomore album, Dear Divine, is due out October 25th.
Little Moon has shared the third single off her forthcoming sophomore album, Dear Divine, due out October 25th via Joyful Noise. “messy love” weaves together a tapestry of orchestral strings, 8-bit synthesizers, and band leader Emma Hardyman’s 4-octave vocal performance for a stunning display of ornate, futuristic baroque pop. FLOOD Magazine praised the “deeply considered lyricism and unexpected deviations from contemporary folk.”
“‘messy love’ is a raw piece of my heart, an anthem for the imperfect, absurd, and deeply human sides of romantic love,” shares Hardyman. “This song captures my own struggles with seeing the shadowy sides of myself reflected in my partner. I wrote it to honor these messy and insecure moments of love and to remind myself—and the world—that it's okay to embrace the shadows within ourselves and our relationships. I believe true connection comes from gently witnessing and being gently witnessed in all our chaotic ways of being. "messy love" is my way of saying that love, in all its messiness, can still be profoundly beautiful and healing.”
The Provo, Utah-based avant-folk band led by Hardyman made waves last year, winning the 2023 edition of NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest with a stirring submission of their explosive, ornately layered song “wonder eye.” Following the release of her 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.
To celebrate the album’s release, Hardyman will be taking Little Moon on a West Coast tour this November, kicking off in Salt Lake City, and heading through Park City, Boise, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Tickets available HERE.
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.
Newly signed to the venerable Joyful Noise, Little Moon announced her new record with the swirling chamber-folk lead single “now,” which was praised by Paste Magazine as “utterly hypnotic and full of love,” and included in Rolling Stone’s Songs You Need to Know. Follow up single “blue,” a flowy synth-pop track with a chaotic, self-immolating finale chronicles Emma Hardyman’s self-trust and intimacy journey, filtered through the lens of a harrowing ocean memory.
Written after her own complicated departure from the Mormon Church, Dear Divine is Little Moon’s wide-eyed, intensely personal embrace of a whole new world. It is a vast, dense sonic tapestry of soaring multi-octave vocals over rich, future-baroque arrangements, mimicking the grandiosity and delicate ebbs and flows of nature, and the radical love and self-care that Hardyman seeks wherever she goes.
Co-produced by Hardyman and Bly Wallentine (who also mixed the album and contributed banjo, horns, melodica and numerous other sounds), Dear Divine is laced with rich textures, from saintly harp plucks and field recordings of crunchy leaves to harshly distorted vocals and Zelda-inspired synths. The LP is also a product of the absurdity Hardyman holds dear, from jarring transitions, oddball effects and a goofy voicemail to perhaps the most absurd (and earnest) choice of all: closing the album with a touching phone-recorded acapella number—a courageous, soul-baring move given that it exceeds five minutes and is the record’s longest track.
Hardyman's new marriage is explored in 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.
Tour Dates:
11/7 - SLC, UT @ Urban Lounge TICKETS
11/8 - Park City, UT @ The Cabin TICKETS
11/9 - Boise, ID @ Neurolux TICKETS
11/10 - Seattle, WA @ Madame Lou's TICKETS
11/12 - Portland, OR @ Mission Theater TICKETS
11/15 - San Francisco, CA @ Popscene at Brick & Mortar TICKETS
11/16 - Los Angeles, CA @ Barnsdall Gallery Theater TICKETS
Photo credit: Mario Alcauter
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