Blebba Grows by Maya Keren

"It was the last day of August 2020 that Maya Keren and I became roommates in a small apartment in Somerville. After months of careful, distanced hangs in the woods outside our parents’ houses, we were finally sharing a home. That first afternoon we ran to the river and looked at the waterbirds, ate burnt quesadillas. It was late that night, sleepy, leaning softly over a child-sized guitar, that Maya showed me ‘Friends I Know.’ The oldest song on the album, its first body was a sweet, clear tapestry of what we knew to be obvious: the constancy of old friendship, a desire for new and unburdened love.

Much of Blebba Grows is an exploration in instability: the casual loneliness and isolation of early adulthood, the fragility of new relationships and the vulnerability they bring. Balanced with the album’s hazy freneticism, though, is a feeling of stability; this music centers around the simple and constant practice of returning home. It reminds me of the safety I felt in Maya’s new room, listening to them sing quietly on our first night."

- Maya Rabinowitz

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I wrote this album mostly in the last six months after moving to Brooklyn. In the midst of this turbulent new era, the process of caring for each emerging song, learning how to record myself with the mics on hand (a Zoom H4, an SM 58, my apple earbuds, and voice memos,) and checking off each box on my logistical to-do list grounded me. Whenever I was feeling frustrated about seemingly futile attempts to “get gigs” or “play with people” (or even to have plans on a Friday night) the daily practice of crafting this album offered a powerful feeling of purpose, momentum, and ultimately, comfort.

Blebba Grows is a promise to myself, a continuing testament to the power of following what feels good and right in the face of so many resistant forces: the fraught entanglement of capitalism with art-making, worries about being perceived as cool or hot in this ultra cool-hot city, insecurities about not being somewhere or something I imagined I could/would be. It is a glimpse into a slow, patient simmering, many afternoons of picking up the guitar and just playing something.

“Blebba” is what my friend Jeff christened himself senior year of college, and is what my friends and I have since adopted as an absurd term of endearment. I still feel a slight tinge of embarrassment to have named the album Blebba Grows but my hope is that this name prevents me or anyone who says it from being able to participate in the aforementioned “cool-hot” aesthetics.

These songs are little rooms of love. To my friends, who save me, to my sweet love partner, to myself, and the dreams I earnestly hope to manifest.
Thank you, thank you, for listening.

Just playing my little songidoos

mayakerenmusic.com