Dear Divine

Hit play on Little Moon’s newest record, “Dear Divine.” Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Allow willow trees shrouded in fog and dewy greenery that sparkles in the sun to come into view. Allow yourself to be enveloped in the enchanted universe the record encapsulates.   

Hailing from Springville, Utah, Little Moon is a six-piece band with Emma Hardyman at their center. Dear Divine is their sophomore album, following “Unphased” in 2020.  

The banjo, harp and piano accompanying the 12-track record aids in capturing the major themes in mythology, spirituality and creativity. This record is a swirl of contradictions exploring love and grief, with tracks exploring Hardyman’s husband and Little Moon guitarist Nathan’s heartache after losing his mother. 

Little Moon was the winner of the 2023 NPR Tiny Desk Concert, and her unbelievably impressive four-octave range makes for an ethereal and other-worldly listening experience. The cutting lyrics and Hardyman’s operatic tone is a sound garden of the bittersweet variety. 

“It holds both love and grief and speaks to the importance of those attributes interchanging, intertwining and dancing together. Those are both really important components to deepening my own humanity,” Hardyman said in SLUG Magazine’s most recent episode of their podcast, “SLUG Soundwaves.” “This album became a journal or an installation and a sort of reverence toward the messy, complex reality of what we call love and what we call grief.”  

Mixed and engineered by Provo musical staple Bly Wallentine, “Dear Divine” proves Little Moon’s ability to thrive in fluid, undefined spaces and their refusal to box themselves into a single genre.  

Tracks like the ethereal folksy piece “now” and the mellow, harmony-driven rock song “messy love” beautifully reflect the chaotic nature of existence. “now” delves into Hardyman’s challenging search for love and trust — qualities often absent in her environment — while “messy love” thoughtfully examines how partners can highlight each other’s imperfections. The track “kind, kind home,” creates a rich tapestry of familial love. This song feels like soft rainfall on my skin as she croons, “feeling numb/feeling all alone/I will try to be a kind, kind home.”  

The plucky acoustic guitar on “holy and sweet” and the harp floating above many of the songs gives way to the religious undertones before Hardyman ever sings her first note.  

The last track “to be a god”  most poignantly approaches Hardyman’s relationship growing up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and her spiritual journey as it is now. The lyrics include, “I didn’t know how to trust myself/I numbed my pain since I was twelve/I think to be a god is to be/pleasantly surprised by how much more you can love.” This song is soft and unassuming, but the lyrics are so affecting because Hardyman sings a capella, without any music to overpower the message.  

Though grief has never touched me the way Hardyman’s lyrics describe, I relate to the idea that life can be unrelenting sometimes — and yet so simultaneously delightful. The little pains and aches that accompany existence won’t keep me from bounding through meadows of daisies, eating raspberries and doing cartwheels.  

 As a 23-year old about to leave the beautiful home and community I’ve found in Logan, this album allows me to explore my own kind of grief — of a place and a home. I will mourn Sunday mornings at Caffe Ibis and nights walking home from the White Owl, bike rides around the Island as the autumn leaves change color and fall and walking around wistfully as the snow swirls.  

But I will listen to this album as I drive away and sit with it. I will sit with the messy and vulnerable feelings that moving on comes with. And this album will reassure me that everything will be okay.