Graham Reid | | 1 min read
To Be A Rose
Although Elsewhere championed Jenny Hval's excellent The Practice of Love album we're aware that she's probably a hard sell.
She has rolled from dark metal, edgy art music and 2016's exacting jazz improvisations of In the End His Voice Will Be the Sound of Paper to alt.folk and experimental sounds under own name, and as Rockettothesky and Lost Girls.
She's now 44, and accomplished novelist who studied at the University of Melbourne and her music doesn't readily fit in any category.
Oh, and she's from Norway so . . .
It's a fair bet however if she were American or British she'd be spoken about in the same company as Laurie Anderson, Bjork, Kate Bush, Japanese Breakfast, FKA Twigs and other innovative women pushing the boundaries of genres.
Her focused and accessible 2019 The Practice of Love should have been her international breakthrough for its winning blend of art pop and electronica.
Hval brings a lot of life and intellectual experiences to her music: one short piece here is about the late German poet and dramatist Heiner Muller.
But there can also be considerable emotional warmth and pop directness (the opener Lay Down).
Apparently inspired by the scents of perfumes discovered during Covid isolation, Iris Silver Mist can be quietly gripping experimental pop (the increasingly intense percussion and clattering of To Be A Rose), dramatic synth-pop (the landscape of sound on I Want to Start at the Beginning and I Want the End to Sound Like This), strident synth-rock (The Artist is Absent) or as hazy as fog (A Ballad).
Jenny Hval isn't an easy proposition but, if those previously mentioned reference points mean anything, there's a career to be discovered starting with this sometimes lush, entrancing and challenging collection.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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