Following the release of her critically acclaimed new album and one of our best albums of 2015 “Apocalypse, Girl”, Norwegian artist Jenny Hval has unveiled the video for stand out track “Sabbath” alongside UK tour dates to take place in November.
The video sees a full band collaborating with Jenny on lead vocals, and including Håvard Volden on electronics, Annie Bielski performing and Zia Anger on visual enhancements. The music video was shot on Anger’s iPhone during their European tour. In the words of Anger the video is, best viewed on a cracked screen.
Previously talking about “Sabbath”,Jenny explains: “I think I’ve been writing this song since about 1986. Because when I was really young I had a dream that my vagina had braces. For a long time, it (‘Sabbath’) was a monologue with a heavy drum loop and I had no idea what it was or why. It was just a galloping urge to say something. And then the chorus appeared. It’s like a mother; it just wants you to be happy. I really wanted to create something soft & loving. And I think it’s really catchy. Which is also very mothering, a mother catches you.”
Apocalypse, girl is out now via Sacred Bones. Jenny Hval has announced UK tour dates this November, full tour dates are available below.
November – 5th @ The Hug & Pint, Glasgow // 7th @ Brudenell Social Club, Leeds // 8th @ Soup Kitchen, Manchester // 9th @ The Lantern, Bristol // 11th @ Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, London
In the wake of Jenny Hval, the Norwegian musician and writer, releasing one of the favourite albums of the year, in Apocalypse, Girl, Here is an exciting mix for your listening pleasure. It’s “WEIRD”, Hval tells us, running from Birmingham dreamers Broadcast through to prolific experimentalist Robert Youngs via tracks from Copeland,Moon Relay and the excellent 11-minute B-side to Salon de Musique, the 1982 solo album from SuburbanLawns’ Su Tissue. Says Hval: “It’s a mix of songs I’ve been given by my friends recently (and absorbed like a sponge), plus a couple of my own recent favourites. My Dinner With Others, you could say (or It Was A Cold, Rainy Summer – we’ve all been stuck inside listening to music up here). Broadcast, Else Marie Pade and Copeland are my own contributions.”
Beyond immediately following this mix with a full play-through of “Apocalypse, Girl” – you can start with the new video for ‘Sabbath’ below – we’d recommend getting yourself tickets for her UK tour dates later this year
NOVEMBER
Thu 5 – The Hug & Pint, Glasgow
Sat 7 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Sun 8 – Soup Kitchen, Manchester
Mon 9 – Lantern, Bristol
Wed 11 – Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, London
It’s impossible to encapsulate the various themes that Jenny Hval invokes on her anthemic offering, Apocalypse, Girl, but above all else, this album is an exploration of sexuality. “I’m six or seven and dreaming that I’m a boy,” Hval sings on “Sabbath,” before interrogating exactly what it means to be that: a girl displaced by her own body and the carnal desire that it inspires. Hval’s sound is performative and spoken-word heavy, but her earnest, prose-driven monologues inevitably descend into melodic choruses. Hooks jut out like elbows and knees in the tangled bed sheets of her narration as she questions what true intimacy should look like: “It would be easy to think about submission, but I don’t think it’s about submission. It’s about: holding and being held.
Taken from the album “Apocalypse, girl” out June 9th on Sacred Bones. & Su Tissue (Norway).
Think big, girl, like a king, think kingsize. Jenny Hval’s new record opens with a quote from the Danish poet Mette Moestrup, and continues towards the abyss. “Apocalypse, girl” is a hallucinatory narrative that exists somewhere between fiction and reality, a post-op fever dream, a colourful timelapse of death and rebirth, close-ups of impossible bodies — all told through the language of transgressive pop music.
When Norwegian noise legend Lasse Marhaug interviewed Jenny Hval for his fanzine in early 2014, they started talking about movies, and the conversation was so interesting that she asked him to produce her next record. It turned out that talking about film was a great jumping off point for album production. Hval’s songs slowly expanded from solo computer loops and vocal edits to contributions from bandmates Håvard Volden and Kyrre Laastad, before finally exploding into collaborations with Øystein Moen (Jaga Jazzist/Puma), Thor Harris (Swans), improv cellist Okkyung Lee and harpist Rhodri Davis. All of these musicians have two things in common: they are fierce players with a great ear for intimacy, and they hear music in the closing of a suitcase as much as in a beautiful melody.
And so Apocalypse, girl is a very intimate, very visual beast. It dreams of an old science fiction movie where gospel choir girls are punks and run the world with auto-erotic impulses. It’s a gentle hum from a doomsday cult, a soft desire for collective devotion, an ode to the close-up and magnified, unruly desires.
Jenny Hval has developed her own take on intimate sound since the release of her debut album in 2006. Her work, which includes 2013’s critically celebrated Innocence Is Kinky (Rune Grammofon), has gradually incorporated books, sound installations and collaborations with poets and visual artists. For Hval, language is central, always torn between the vulnerable, the explosive and total humiliation.
Jenny Hval has just finished the first run of US shows w/ St Vincent, which was truly AMAZING, Thanks to everyone who came to see us, cheered, got a bit terrified by the bananas, bought Soft Dick Rock shirts (or bought Soft Dick Rock shirts for their friends/girlfriends/boyfriends/kids! WORD!). Most of all: a big thank you to the amazing St Vincent + my exquisite band: Håvard Volden, Zia Anger and Annie Bielski. LOVE. Shows continue in a few days when we meet up w Perfume Genius.
“Meshes of Voice”, my collaboration with the wonderful Susanna, will finally be released on vinyl! Please support this very special release by pre-ordering here.
“Meshes of Voice” by Susanna and I won the Norwegian Grammy in “Åpen Klasse” (Open Category)! We were very surprised and grateful and very, very close to completely speechless. Thanks to everybody who were involved in the project, both back in 2009 (when it was a concert piece) and for the 2014 record!
Meshes of Voice will be performed at CTM festival in Berlin, and we’re also doing a Scandinavian mini-tour in February (see above). What will it be like? Take a look at these beautiful sneak peaks: 1 &2.
Susanna (Wallumrød) and I have released a collaboration album, ‘Meshes of Voice’ (via Susanna’s excellent label SusannaSonata). We recently performed the project at Ultima Festival in Oslo, at (the excellent! feminist!) magazine FETT’s 10 year anniversary in Bergen, and at UNSOUND Festival in Krakow…and hopefully there’s more to come. There have been some excellent reviews:
Jenny Hval is a an ambient/electro-indie/art rock singer-songwriter and novelist from Oslo. In the late 1990s, she was in a goth-metal band, but since then, she’s been making music that people often compare to the likes of Laurie Anderson and Björk. She released two albums under the name Rocettothesky, and has released two under her own given name. Next week, her third album “Apocalypse, Girl” comes out on Sacred Bones Records.
I didn’t know too much about Jenny Hval Anyway, the point is that Jenny Hval is often compared to Björk, so I kinda feared that it was the “weird Björk” that people compared her to. The MedullaBjörk. When I listened to a couple of the new Jenny Hval songs I was immediately smitten with her voice . Sure, this is some stuff that most people would consider “weird”, but I like it. If this is like Björk, this is like the late-90s Björk. Like Vespertine,
While I haven’t tracked down any of the older stuff, I’ve heard the new album, and I really like it. There’s some harsh moments though. The album is strewn with some pretty graphic references to male and female genitalia, and to sex. It’s actually fairly erotic. It’s not an album that you can listen to with your grandmother. It is, though, an album that rewards the listener for patience and thorough listening. Here’s one of my favorites:
This song has some elements that remind me of Broadcast, Oviously I’m not saying that Jenny Hval sings like the late Trish Keenan or like Björk. The synths and the drums sound like Broadcast. The overall “feel” of the song is kinda Björk-esque. Sexy and mysterious and weird. In the best kind of way.
“Apocalypse, girl” comes out next week. You can pre-order it via bandcamp here. You can also buy physical versions of the album, or bundle an LP with a t-shirt at the label’s web shop. If you’re looking at that t-shirt wondering what “soft dick rock” means, it’s a reference to a line in the first song from the album. That first song “Kingsize” is itself a reference to a collection of poems by Danish poet Mette Moestrup. The first line of the song is a line from one of Moestrup’s poems.
Hval’s latest novel is called Perlebryggeriet, (which means “Pearl brewery”) and it hasn’t been translated from Norwegian. So if you’re fluent in Norwegian, you should buy her book . They say it’s set in a “fictional town somewhere between Glasgow and Melbourne” and that it’s about some kids living together while their house turns itself inside out. I got a big kick out of that “between Glasgow and Melbourne” line. That’s a distance of 17,000 km approx.
On “That Battle Is Over,”Jenny Hval spills her guts like it’s no big deal: these days every thing I write begins with the question, “What’s wrong with me?” That’s only one of several dozen ideas that spill out of the Norwegian singer-songwriter’s brain in the span of four minutes. The track is the first single from “Apocalypse, Girl” , the follow up to Hval’scollaborative LP with Susanna and her first full-length since signing to Brooklyn label Sacred Bones.
In a press release, Jenny Hval said the song—which is just built on a percussive loop, some organ chords, and Hval’s angelic multi-tracked vocalizations—is intentionally “flat,” and that it’s like her version of Fiona Apple karaoke. While it’s true that the song’s melody mirrors “Criminal” in a few places, “That Battle Is Over” feels more conceptual than that comparison allows; it’s like a weird, rambling, Hval-ian take on the idea of a “pop song” in general. “Apocalypse, Girl” is out on June 9th.
The Fat Angel Sings 