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jazzy_daveFrom her wonderful 2011 album Viscera on Rune Grammofon, the pure joy of listening to Jenny Hval is visceral.
Jenny Hval - Black Morning/Viscera
The Wire review of this CD -
“I arrived in town with an electric toothbrush pressed against my clitoris”, declares Jenny Hval – the first line of the first song on the first album to be released under her own name. The sluices are wide open from here on in, and references to body parts and functions tumble out and squint in the daylight: clitoris, cunt, erection, blood, sweat, veins, itching, eggs, lips, voice, piss, fingernails, marrow. Her evocative surrealistic language is planted in a lush backdrop of zither, guitar and church organ (played by Hval herself), more guitars by Håvard Volden and drums by Kyrre Laastad. The record as a whole is a finely sculpted construction. Fragile melodic laser-cut patterns are set against an earthy beat of tambourine and bass drum, giving the album a folky drive.
Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush and fellow Norwegians Bel Canto and Mari Boine have clearly been in Hval’s tap water while growing up. However, the territory she conjures feels entirely her own. First conceived as a musical version of Georges Bataille’s erotic novel The Story Of O, Viscera is instead a meditation on the human body as resonating chamber – specifically the female body, with its chambers and tubes. Hval is steeped in the magic of words, having written a novel, an academic dissertation (about Kate Bush) as well as poems, beside her musical outings as founder of Avant pop group Rockettothesky and the duo Meshes Of Voice with Susanna Wallumrød (of Susanna And The Magical Orchestra). Viscera forms part of a prolific artist’s growing body of work and manages a rare thing: to be a stunning achievement both conceptually and musically.
Enjoy.
Jenny Hval - Black Morning/Viscera
The Wire review of this CD -
“I arrived in town with an electric toothbrush pressed against my clitoris”, declares Jenny Hval – the first line of the first song on the first album to be released under her own name. The sluices are wide open from here on in, and references to body parts and functions tumble out and squint in the daylight: clitoris, cunt, erection, blood, sweat, veins, itching, eggs, lips, voice, piss, fingernails, marrow. Her evocative surrealistic language is planted in a lush backdrop of zither, guitar and church organ (played by Hval herself), more guitars by Håvard Volden and drums by Kyrre Laastad. The record as a whole is a finely sculpted construction. Fragile melodic laser-cut patterns are set against an earthy beat of tambourine and bass drum, giving the album a folky drive.
Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush and fellow Norwegians Bel Canto and Mari Boine have clearly been in Hval’s tap water while growing up. However, the territory she conjures feels entirely her own. First conceived as a musical version of Georges Bataille’s erotic novel The Story Of O, Viscera is instead a meditation on the human body as resonating chamber – specifically the female body, with its chambers and tubes. Hval is steeped in the magic of words, having written a novel, an academic dissertation (about Kate Bush) as well as poems, beside her musical outings as founder of Avant pop group Rockettothesky and the duo Meshes Of Voice with Susanna Wallumrød (of Susanna And The Magical Orchestra). Viscera forms part of a prolific artist’s growing body of work and manages a rare thing: to be a stunning achievement both conceptually and musically.
Enjoy.
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