Jenny Hval – Iris Silver Mist
Artist : Jenny Hval
Album : Iris Silver Mist
Label : 4AD
Link : https://jennyhval.com/
Style: Pop, Alternative & Indie
The Norwegian Jenny Hval takes us into a world of delicate, luminous light, with a sophisticated pop style and many strings to her bow. Her new album Iris Silver Mist is filled with layers of sound as light as perfume.
While still a teenager, she played lead vocals in a gothic metal band and studied writing in Melbourne, which led her first to write newspaper articles, then to publish short stories and novels. Back in Norway, she produced her own music, initially under the name Rockettothesky, then under her own name. At the same time, she was involved in the Lost Girl project. In her albums, the theme of sensory memory is often evoked and used to remind listeners of sensations already experienced.
On Iris Silver Mist (deliberately named after a perfume), Jenny Hval tells us about the emotions that her sense of smell can bring back when she detects familiar scents. To achieve this, she employs an airy pop style, full of weightless atmospheres, sometimes verging on the ambient, but always with a charming underpinning. With her seductive, high-pitched vocals and her carefully crafted sonic entanglements, she gives us a sense of height to better apprehend her rich, personal musical landscape, all in a calm rhythm where each element has time to blossom.
In addition to the instruments traditionally found in pop and folk music, there are soft electronica sounds, with a few hints of field recordings that are even more appreciable when listened to through headphones. These components are not scattered, and the sensation is not one of collage or superimposition, but rather of evolution, as in the olfactory notes of a perfume that we detect more and more. The rhythm remains gentle, while the caressing layers of sound draw you into this weightless world.