Jenny Hval - Viscera

http://images.theartsdesk.com/images/stories/NEW_MUSIC/Kieron_Tyler/jenny_hval/jenny-hval-viscera_web03.jpg

Any thoughts on the new Jenny Hval (from Rockettothesky) on Rune Grammafon? Just giving it a first listen (on Spotify) and it sounds fantastic. Beautifully recorded songs that mix guitars and drums and subtle ambient electronics to create this gorgeous shimmering luminescence that folks like Bark Psychosis used to deal in - mostly quiet and hushed but not without a certain taut intensity. Vocal delivery makes me think of Laurie Anderson or Meredith Monk, lyrics are um, somewhat intimate. Lots of singing about her fanny afaict, would definitely be interested by people's responses to that.

Maybe it's just the nordic thing, but it's kind of like Lau Nau, but a little less homespun and a little more pristine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF6hvxQBDSo

Googling tells me she's a member of the Kate Bush forum - figures!

Been dipping in and out of her latest album for a while now. Liking the job that John Parish has done on it, but I think it's a testament to the strength of Hval's sense of self that she doesn't wind up sounding like a PJ Harvey clone at all, even when the music gets a bit bluesy and grungey. Intriguing artist, still haven't really figured her out. Anyone else heard this?

Yes! I've been sort of quietly obsessed with it since it came out, and narrowly missed seeing her live with Kirin Callinan a couple of weeks ago...

This record with Susanna Wallumrød is a joy from start to finish

and not to take anything away from either of them, it's another amazing *sounding* recording by Helge Deathprod, makes lightness feel so damn heavy

Have you managed to buy this or is it a review copy? Have had a copy on order for an age.

haven't got a copy but it's on spotify

Still waiting for my copy to arrive ...

Been digging this record for a minute now (I downloaded, tho)

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/17362-jenny-heval-that-battle-is-over/

Saw her live last night, great fun, fantastic sound. I'm going to have to get her new album. She's coming across as more of a performance artist these days but there's some great songwriting anchoring it all.

seeing her next week, not really too sure what to expect

At Black Box, Leonard Pine? I wanted to go but couldn't.

Yep! It was good, if I were you I'd try to see her at some later point. I really wasn't sure what to expect but the performance art elements mainly made for a really tightly controlled performance (no inbetween song applause for example) and some entertaining window dressing like video art and bewigged technicians/dancers. The musicians were called pretty much no attention to and were sat with the audience which I've never experienced before either. There were some suppressed giggles at the more out there stuff but I'm 99% sure it was meant to be funny in the first place. But it was really all about the music, which was great - I'd only heard "That Battle Is Over" which wasn't representative at all, probably one of the slowest songs of the night.

She's performing Meshes of Voice with Susanna at the Kongsberg Jazz festival in a couple weeks which I'd love to see but they're on at 2 on a workday :/

I am not familiar with her, but was just checking out Apocalypse, girl from a list of new releases on Spotify, not knowing what to expect. I would not have thought I'd want this sort of thing, especially the spoken word bits, but so far I think it's great. On the first couple tracks it feels like she's taking on everything, shooting irony in all directions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGksHxwnap0

Lyrically, from what I remember (I think I've only listened to the full album twice) the rest of the album being less obvious and heavy-handed, and more full of surprises, than this track. I'm saying this because I can imagine someone being uninterested or even a little turned off by this single, still really liking the album.

The video is pretty gorgeous (while full of the grotesque).

A lot of this lyrically feels very heavy handed indeed but it SOUNDS gorgeous.

The whole album sounds great, true (and imagine if I were listening to it on something legitimate).

This is probably a little more typical of the album than the video track above.

As far as lyrics go, the spoken word opener to the album is pretty good and funny, I think.

definitely enjoy the lusher tracks towards the end of the record more than the stuff at the start

god i made some abominable earlier posts on this thread

Innocence is Kinky is retrospectively one of my favorite albums of 2013. I'm slightly surprised it didn't place in ILM's EOY poll.

I wasn't into IIK at all, but I really like half of the new record.

The P4k interview is good!

“Take Care of Yourself” goes for a delicate intimacy that you can’t really get when everything becomes about sexual success, and this frightening idea that sexuality is not something that leads to something and then climaxes and it’s over; it’s this endless thing that you can never satisfy. You can see it very cynically—just floating on the sea not doing anything, just wallowing. It’s like the Internet: click click click.

She says a lot of inspiring stuff, I'll have to check out the record. Hilarious cover art.

oh yeah also "soft dick rock" is v funny

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0263/1575/products/hvalfrontblack_18660a53-7ef2-4f8f-8de6-80f9b851ee84_1024x1024.jpg

Love her. "Sabbath" is really excellent.

I like how "Sabbath" goes from a metrically/melodically free form stretch that's most about telling a story, to a chorus that anyone writing straightforward song form would be very happy to come up with. There are other cases on this album when loosely structured tracks contain more closed, more melodic and traditionally musical, forms.

There's another one of those striking shifts in "Why This." (I keep being reminded of the Psychic TV/White Stains collaboration At Stockhlom, though I would a million times rather listen to Havl. But some of the use of samples (or just sound) and the alternation between unmetered stretches and passages where rhythm comes to the foreground is reminiscent. I'd love to have an instrumental version of At Stockholm, actually.)

Hilarious radio station in-studio performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZpSuYamMsE

"Hilarious" was going to far.

I am disappointed with the video for "Sabbath." Getting a bit tired of the way she distances herself from the beauty of her own music or from the authentic feelings expressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csIDglmrupc&spfreload=10

'Conceptual Romance' is just a beautiful song

i agree

Agreed!

new album blood bitch streaming on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2016/09/22/494571616/first-listen-jenny-hval-blood-bitch

I'm absolutely in love with this album. Conceptual Romance, The Great Undressing, and Secret Touch are truly incredible songs, just transcendent pieces of dark, intimate, and introspective pop lyricism that has been largely missing in my music diet of late. Many of the other songs, such as In the Red, on their own are a bit intense in their sonic explorations, but fit very well in the big picture of this record as an "album" which I really enjoy. Can't wait to get a physical copy.

I've only recently gotten into her, but I've just been floored by her voice and sound. Very intensely creative and intimate artist. With blood powers.

"Secret Touch" is great. Pop music infused with raw humanity.

She's on the cover of the newest Wire

Not up to the standards of Innocence is Kinky or (the more relevant, because aesthetically closer) Apocalypse, girl to me.

today truly felt like the first day of fall in chicago -- complete with cold wind -- and this album connected around magic hour time, it'll serve as my halloween 2016 soundtrack

Fancy vinyl version of BB - http://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/products/sbr161-jenny-hval-blood-bitch

Seeing her tonight with Moor Mother and Olga Bell! Her last show in Philly (for Apocalypse, Girl at the Boot & Saddle; I forget the openers) was incredible so my expectations are pretty high

have always been a bit intrigued with individual songs i have heard - if you had to choose one record is this new one just as good a place to start as any

Start with Apocalypse Girl. More consistent and less intensely experimental than Blood Bitch. I feel you'll have a good idea whether or not you'll like her after just taking in the first couple songs off that. However, I feel the new one has the higher peaks and is the more rewarding repeat listen.

Personally, I think they're both much better than Innocence is Kinky. I have yet to hear Viscera.

Have her lyrics got any less blunt this time around? That killed the last one stone dead for me even when the music was often excellent.

I can hardly make out most of the lyrics on the new one.

I think Apocalypse, girl is just as "experimental." Blood Bitch just seems very blurry all the way through, and doesn't have the peaks of Apocalypse, girl. Where are the brilliant melodic eruptions on the new one? Blood Bitch is also not as varied in terms of sheer sound. She had a lot of collaborators for Apocalypse, girl, which obviously doesn't inherently make an album better, but in this case the greater sound palate is a huge attraction.

Also kind of getting annoyed with her. An album about vampires and menstruation--Oh Jenny, you're so quirky!

Parts of Apocalypse, girl still remind me in an odd way of Psychic TV w/ White Stains At Stockholm (which I don't especially recommend although maybe I do for at least one listen). The transition at 1:28-1:32 in "Why This?" for instance.

Recommend "Apocalypse, girl" as well. Her lyrics are not any less blunt on the new one.

The Psychic TV name checking is enough to get me to listen to this

It really only reminds me of At Stockholm at a couple points, but there are a couple transitions which are similar. I guess some of the use of samples overall is similar as well.

Conceptual Romance is really something

Hval can pretty much do no wrong in my book http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/18693-kelly-lee-owens-anxi-ft-jenny-hval/

this is basically a Maria Minerva track

Maria Minerva's the best - OK with me. It's a lot less fun than Minerva though.

this new lost girls EP (two tracks, 24 minutes) is very good. anyone else listening to it?

i went to check out a bad andrew wk review, but left listening to a new hval side-project i didn't even know about. it was a good visit to pitchfork

Yeah, it's quite good. I think the A-side was the centerpiece at her concert at Roskilde last summer. Anyone else who have heard it live?

Oh damn there's new hval; tnanks Karl

hval's music shares so many of the best qualities of kate bush and laurie anderson. i'm surprised there isn't more love for her here since those two are certified ilxor legends

Listened to Blood Bitch soooo much in the last year or so, it's pretty wonderful.

Love to get a hold of Hval's Kate bush essay, but haven't found it in English

Have you found it in Norwegian? Would love to read it as well :)

there is some sort of academic paper on the subject on the link below but it's written by someone else:

jennyhval.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ENO-Kate-Bush.pdf

actually no, it's just a long interview with jenny on the subject (i think!)

an interview w/ jenny h about her thesis i mean

I would like to read the thesis. Hval says that it's a 'listening' of the music, an analysis of the relationship between Bush and Hval, as facilitated by headphones. The things they say about The Dreaming are really interesting, I'll try and listen more to that. About how Bush until then mostly depicted one subject at a time, but on The Dreaming the very sense of self breaks down. Also, Hval really likes The Dreaming, the song, because Hval herself speaks English in a fake Australian accent :)

Dreaming is a huge basis for the Kate influence on her stuff I think. A song like Secret Touch is lyrically anguished and brutal but cut with a sweetness vocally similar to Kate songs like Houdini or Infant Kiss. Hval is also a proponent of esoterotica mixed with pop

#releasethethesis

I'm trying to contact Jenny for the thesis - fingers crossed

I think all Master thesises are publically available in Norway. Anybody should be able to check it out of the university library.

^ I'm in canada bud :P

I didn't see the new one on iTunes - is it under lost girls as band?

i'm not sure about iTunes but on Spotify it's filed as you'd expect: Lost Girls as the artist, Feeling as the name of the single.

speaking of, i came here to express my love for the first song on that single, "Drive". the first 8 or 9 minutes of it in particular is gripping, culminating in the sounds of her crying to her own music (or at least alluding to that memory). it's kind of shocking to hear it happen, because those kinds of memories are usually hidden (which she references with "i would never tell you this" just before her admission). also it's kind of weird how all the online lyrics for the song just stop halfway through. apparently whoever was working on it just got tired of it and wandered off

Thanks Karl, as you mentioned it's artist - Lost Girls and album "Feeling" as title. The description above sounds amazing, just need to find the proper head space for this

i listened to driving in the middle of nowhere in illinois the other day and i was crying along with it. not exactly sure why, even, but it's intense stuff.

Love that first track. Seems like a peak display of one theme that has permeated her work to date: desire for physical and spiritual connection. Hval's penchant for immediacy and addressing her audience without disconnect from narrator to audience or superiority is refreshing. Embrace the suffering and it ceases to exist

drive has a reference to kate bush -

hval - i just want to show you things, here, here, here"

kate - "i put this moment here, i put this moment here, i put this moment over here"

Hval's thesis is restricted access, besides the abstract.

Google translate:

"Stepping out of the page": Kate Bush and the singing voice of literature
Whale, Jenny
2010
This thesis investigates the singing voice and sung text in a literary and phenomenological context through analyzes of Kate Bush's recordings The Dreaming (1982) and The Sensual World (1989). Central to the relationship between text and song, a field that is underrepresented in literature science. Bush is a literally conscious pop artist in his work on songwriting, song and production. The unique of her expression is the ability to create literary qualities in the actual song-Kate Bush's texts are articulated, manipulated and tanned using voice usage, vocal effects and sound images.
The aim is to place the singing voice in the literature of literature by listening to how text is singled. In the analysis section, close listening is used to the text that I hear, as you usually read text. Inspiration for the method is derived from theories that appreciate the audible, volatile experience of music, voice and text: Roland Barthes' essays about music, Charles Bernstein's approach to poetry readings, and Adriana Cavaro's phenomenological study of the voice. Toril Moi's work with Simone de Beauvoir is also emphasized because it links phenomenology and feminism in a way that is relevant to Bush's expression.
The close-up can reveal poetic qualities that are not found in written versions of lyrics. The method can show how the song expression is not just musical or text interpretative work, but literary work that is rooted in the singing body and the relation between artist and listener. Throughout this work, Bush can create a personal and strong female expression. This expression is most evident when she recounts the end of James Joyces' Ulysses on the song "The Sensual World", and this recording can demonstrate the literary and feminist potential of pop music.

Thanks Sanpaku

Hval was heavily influenced by Safe on "Apocalypse Girl", great film (opening music seems to have been a sonic reference on the record)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWzQGIjiePs

Her novel is coming out in English in October: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2775-paradise-rot

New ep. haven’t heard it yet but damn she’s prolific

whoa thanks, i didn't know!

i really like the opener "spells" and the long, mostly instrumental title track. she's really on a roll imo

First track references steal my sunshine by Len

So does the second track. Whoa

Honestly I think I like this as much as any lp she’s done

Some of my best friends are EPS!

Honestly I think I like this as much as any lp she’s done

Some of my best friends are EPS!

Oh god I hit the button twice. Sorry

Karl the ending killed me on this. She says thank you, I love you which felt like sincere appreciation. She may be an avant-garde weirdo but she communicates so directly and breaks through boundaries

yeah, and before that, warning that it might be promotion. so good

Wow, I really like the new "The Long Sleep" EP. It's like Jane Weaver's recent works without the motorik beat. Are any of her other releases in a similar vein?

Hard to say. Her LPs veer from spoken word to dream pop to a combo of both, but the new one is more digestible cuz it’s 4 tracks. Start with apocalypse and then go to blood bitch?

https://i.imgur.com/rCShYUc.jpg

A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery

Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.

This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.

“In Paradise Rot, Jenny Hval creates a parallel world that’s familiar but subtly skewed. As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder.”

– Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2775-paradise-rot

New album The Practice of Love out today. Gave it only one semi-distracted spin so far but it seems pretty great.

nice, thanks for the head's up! i've loved pretty much everything she's released recently, including the Lost Girls stuff

None of the album tracks blow me away like “High Alice” did but yeah, it feels like a satisfying balance between her songwriting and poetry.

Sounds great to me - her songwriting is always intriguing.

I'm seeing her in two months (on the top floor of a shopping centre, partially converted into a theatre space, which seems oddly fitting given some of her lyrics) and the organizers are going out of their way in the promos to describe the event as a 'performance' rather than a gig, so I wonder what's in store. Her live concerts have mostly been pretty bizarre, haven't they?

The one I saw a couple years back was adequately described as a 'performance', yeah. I mean, the music was there, and it was played live, but there was dancers and some of the more droning songs worked more as soundtracks to... performative things...

Love this album.

Took a couple of listens, but absolutely adore this album. Not sure how many times I will need to hear that radio interview (?) in The Practice of Love over and over again, but the rest of it is wonderful.

Too short.

this is oscar's 2019 pick for album of the year so far

"six red cannas" and "ordinary" are so good

it all belongs together, at 33 minutes. the lost girls "feelings" ep from last year also flowed nicely, 2 long songs, 24 minutes.

I feel stupid for asking, but does anyone know what the years referenced in Six Red Cannas mean?

i'm not sure if they reference anything specific, or if it's more about suggesting communication and connecting between different points of time

This is such a beautiful album.

have never really got into her previous work, but i'm really loving The Practice of Love

Came across the phrase “the practice of love” in The Will to Change and now I’m wondering if that’s where she got it?

the practice of love is the first jenny hval record i've ever liked and boy do i LOVE it. it's a garden of crystal

i have no idea who jenny hval is but big ups to lukas for reading the will to change

Matt you would like this record I think!

I’ll look for it thx!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URjW9mLegcY

love this

I just watched all her music videos and here is my ranking. How Gentle was kind of too different to rank against the rest.

Sabbath
That Battle Is Over
Conceptual Romance
The Great Undressing
Female Vampire
Take Care of Yourself
Accident
Spell

shout out to Grizzly Man

wish she'd done videos for High Alice and Ashes to Ashes

also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MF830eJw7M

really why so few videos on the last album? :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HXi4JtQWYU

I never thought to look at her videos before (I don't really watch videos generally). They're interesting, but they have a lot of people in them. Is she making loads of money or does she just have a lot of friends? I'm not into huge groups of people, in any context.

those do look like posse videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IwDEUV6yA0

definitely my favorite so far, with a special treat for fans of the last album

the first Lost Girls LP is out on March

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/602bd80030935c407867c3a0/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Lost-Girls.jpg

01 Menneskekollektivet
02 Losing Something
03 Carried by Invisible Bodies
04 Love, Lovers
05 Real Life

the structure of the title track is similar to "Drive" on the Feeling EP from 2018 (I think their only other release under the Lost Girls name?) - over 10 minutes, beginning with a long spoken word (in this case about jehovah's witnesses and an inverse "in the beginning" featuring darkness and silence) before building up to the more synth/singing/song-oriented last half.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ah7o9sxpHk

Love this. Enjoying hearing her stretch out over beats that aren't her usual.

Wish I still mixed, I would love to put this track in a set.

Lost Girls album is out, it's lovely.
Also still surprises me to hear the Australian in Hval's spoken word bits, even though I know she lived here for a while.

Where's it out? I see a pre-order link on Bandcamp ...

oh out tomorrow, I can wait.

ah i'd never noticed the australian influence in her accent before

album is great

can't wait to listen to the full thing!

i mean, i can wait. just saw lukas' post and thought well yeah, i can wait too i guess :)

It's on Spotify here--does that stagger releases by local date? I assumed it came out everywhere at once.

i don't see the album yet on spotify, just the two singles (menneskekollektivet and losing something)

it's not on Spotify here yet. it is not yet available in the United States. I am prevented from hearing it.

spotify staggers releases by local date in general except for the occasional major label pop album which gets a global worldwide release

i think people who enjoyed the title track will like the rest of the album too, it's similar in feeling but there's a lot of nice guitar soloing too

kind of reminds me of lindstrom & prin thomas's ii which i love

also maybe the closest we'll ever get to a new knife album? like it's not ripping them off or anything but very much feels like an unexplored direction they could have gone on

Damn that sold out quick :/

Listened to Menneskekollektivet after I saw it was a duo with Jenny Hval (from the cover I had thought probably a female indie rock band). I am not really feeling the long pieces, too meticulous and conceptual and not really gripping. Hval is not at her best. The true highlight turned out to be 'Real Life' (guitar also a nice addition on Losing Something).

New cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXhVN_oRcv8

if you like Jenny Hval, I recommend the new Tirzah album

I like both Jenny Hval & Tirzah - unsure how compatible they are. JennyH is far more wordy than Tirzah for one - that new Tirzah record has a kind of chilly, hazed ambiguity which is pointedly unpretentious in my mind. Part of her ineffable charm is that her songs have an unfinished , rough quality whereas Jenny H is unafraid of going into territory which sounds like she has composed dramatic decidedly 'unrandom' mini symphonies and she pairs this with lyrics which are an odd mixture of almost academic textbook ideas & visceral emotion. JennyH has got more material with probably more variety in there as wellm- Tirzah just has those two albums. Thinking this through now - it IS an interesting comparison and I can see some similarities in that they are both clearly thoughtful artists with layers of sub text - but the finished product for me & approach seems kinda opposite. Its got me thinking though.

so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJB7UR91JrA

yes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i2oJJwgLTk

gorgeous

new album's very good, maybe not quite as good as the lost girls album last year but still very enjoyable

general vibe reminds me of aerial and animals so it's really made for me

Her music is often beautifully layered, here it's beautifully bare, natural-mechanical, and placing more focus on her solo voice, almost approaching Susanne Sundfør lyrical art pop. It feels very confident and accomplished. Not every composition hits, but each tries something out convincingly and the eight songs are consistent.

This is a really addictive and super-accessible album and I think my favourite Hval to date. Instantly gratifying as a fresh springtime pop album but there are layers and layers and layers to unpick. The structures are possibly less conventionally pop than on The Practice of Love but it is somehow a much easier and more nourishing listen.

the year of love is a fantastic song

Finally listening to this.

Given it is currently uncertain whether Julia Holter will make further albums in the vein of Have You In My Wilderness, I’m very grateful to Hval for stepping into the breach so consummately.

Why'd it take me so long to listen to this? Julia Holter vibes are right, Tim F. A rather stunning, accessible, naturalist pop record.

coincidentally listening to it right now. excellent album!

I've had this on my 'to listen' list for a while, just getting round to it now thanks to the thread bump. This is great so far, Year of Love is such an arresting song.

lovely new song, 'buffy':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoBkkXpvO9E

sublime

new lost girls album isn't as strong as menneskekollektivet or classic objects but is still quite nice