“It’s sort of an elevated state, a very receptive state”.
“Transcendental in trance” is how the avant-garde Norwegian singer-songwriter has termed her latest full-length LP, The Practice of Love. And in the midst of this transcendental experience, comes various thematic topics brought close to the heart of Jenny Hval - self-recognition, birth, and existence, seemingly a far cry from her previous LP, Blood Bitch, indulging in vampires and menstruation. Yet compared to her similar contemporaries of Julia Holter and Holly Herndon, Hval lacks critical structure bolting these waves of ambient sonics together on her 7th LP, even through the intriguing vignettes of personalised spoken word.
Transcending into a deep ominous world of 90s synth trance, perhaps reminiscent of Pet Shop Boys or Björk, ‘Lions’ and ‘High Alice’ begin the ethereal landscapes of Hval’s conjuring. Soaring vocals courtesy of Vivian Wang in the former track help bolster this sense of ‘trance’ whilst Hval implores the listener to “look at them now...look closer”. Heavy-handed synth refrains congeal ominously with reverberating saxophones sporadically dotted amongst this brooding environment - pertinently supplying Hval a sense of escapability from a societally-restricted world.
In which ‘Accident’ stands to be a clear facet against - featuring a newly-released music video of two elderly women unable to bear the societal consequences against, what Hval terms as, ‘childlessness’. In her tenuous state, Hval conjures an intriguing inception to her latest LP, portraying her own ‘practice of love’ situated well within Laura Jean’s culminating crescendo repeatedly exclaiming “she is an accident” - scrutinising our very notion of personal ‘accidents’.
Hval’s evident side-career of spoken word and literature comes further into the fray with the aforementioned featured artists invited back for the title track, ‘The Practice of Love’. Swelling amongst a more ambient landscape, Jean and Wang suitably offer their personal testimonials, “I have a thousand placentas and they are all burnt” is exclaimed in conjunction with Hval’s biting rhetoric. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ luckily offers a much-needed pick-me-up at the LP’s mid-section gracing a return to the nostalgic trance tropes of the previous century incorporating a vocal delivery so delicately reminiscent with that of Dido’s.
Unfortunately the heights of this ‘elevated state’ begin to precariously recede in the LP’s concluding tracks. The trio of saxophones merging within ‘Thumbsucker’ do all but paper over the cracks of Hval’s repeated reliance on intricate drum patterns and transcendental synth chords - likewise with ‘Six Red Cannas’ which lacks real bite to the dancier grooves of its forebears. Perhaps most noticeably peculiar is the LP’s conclusion with ‘Ordinary’, which concedes a lack of closure to the pertinent themes offered in this journey’s ‘receptive’ experience. Similar to the ending of Hval’s previous EP of last year, her commands to “be ordinary” and “we don’t get to choose when we’re close” only muddies the waters of her societal narrative as the search for thematic solace continues.
Whilst The Long Sleep EP of 2018 traversed amongst intriguing free-spirited jazz, my hopes that this may further perpetuate decidedly went astray. Instead, Hval only offers mere sporadic moments of jazz as it’s entirely enveloped by such ethereal sonic landscapes painted by such beautifully-produced synth chords and drum patterns which journey us through time. Yet the elevated state we find ourselves in to begin with on this LP only furthers the fall in its latter half as the lack of clarity within Hval’s sonic and lyrical ideas run dry in this ocean of 80s and 90s trance. Her jazzier self may have failed to formulate fully within her latest set of music, however, Jenny Hval still reaches an innocuous ‘elevated state’ continuously playing on our receptives at every turn and corner - and for that she must be duly commended on this holistic-than-ever LP.
6/10
Jenny Hval's latest LP, The Practice of Love, is out now and can be found here.
Tickets to her upcoming show at London's Barbican Centre are on sale now and can be found here.
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