Norway’s own experimental pop-art singer/songwriter/novelist Jenny Hval has unveiled the first glimpse of new music since her move to UK based record label 4AD. The new single, and confirmed album opener, “Year of Love” presents Hval’s gorgeous vocals and rhythmical, overflowing lyrics atop a percussive landscape. Due on March 11th, Classic Objects will be Hval’s 9th full-length LP. In a statement, Hval describes the new album as “a map of places; past places, like the old empty Melbourne pubs Hval’s band used to play in, public places Hval missed throughout lockdown, imagined, future places, and impossible places where dreams, hallucinations, death and art can take you. It is interested in combining heavenly things and plain things.”
The accompanying video, also directed by Hval with additional credits to Jenny Berger Myhre and Annie Bielski, was created to provoke a specific emotional contrast. “A sense of loss and joy intertwines in a world of disconnected rooms. The artist inhabits these rooms. She is frozen in time, space, and mid-vowel. She is aware of her immediate surroundings. She is aware that there is more beyond what she can see. A version of her exists in a compressed, compromised, and objectified state. She is sitting in a room, in a house, in a neighbourhood, in the art industry.” Watch the video below.
Said to be based on a disturbing experience of a fan proposing at one of her shows, Hval states, “It confronted me with the fact that I am also married. What does that detail from my private life say about me as an artist? ‘Year of Love’ asks, who am I as an artist? Do my private actions betray my work and voice?”. All of these emotions are said to be presented in Hval’s version of a pop album, “Every song has a verse and a chorus. There are interchangeable moments of complexity, interesting melodies throughout, and a feeling of elevation and clarity in the choruses.”
For more information on pre-ordering Classic Objects in its LP, CD, or Limited-edition indie store blue vinyl, you can head here. If you’re after even more of Hval’s time then you can look into the single UK date on her upcoming tour. Several Scandinavian dates and a few scattered around Europe left only time for one date at London’s EartH in Hackney on April 11th. For more information on tickets, check here.
