Jenny Hval
Iris Silver Mist
4AD
Jun 03, 2025
Internet Unique
Amongst our senses, odor stands out in its capability to recall the previous. Olfactory recollections have been proven to be extra emotionally charged than visible ones, a results of odor stimuli bypassing the thalamus. Scent developed as a way for our predecessors to entry the previous so as to outlive.
For Norwegian musician, author, and artist Jenny Hval, odor is a option to expertise bodily intimacy—a way to thrive within the current. Within the absence of stay music throughout COVID-19, and for the primary time since she was a young person, Hval took an curiosity in perfumes, filling the void with an abundance of scents. The ensuing album, Iris Silver Mist (her second for 4AD and ninth total) is amongst her most evocative, its tactile imagery embracing every of the senses.
Cigarette smoke seems in lyrical type on “To be a rose” and “I don’t know what free is.” The previous conjures quasi-hallucinations of animated roses bursting into lit cigarettes decaying into smoke-filled lungs as Hval describes a stage that’s “clearly, actually, falling aside.” The latter is like incense, its gently unfurling layers drawing consideration to 1’s breath and physique, inviting listeners to stretch and sink into the feeling of contact. “I wish to begin in the beginning,” which accommodates shades of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s async, reminds considered one of style, the bodily jolts of starvation and longing, as Hval gives a deconstructed account of a burger.
Like scent reminiscence, Iris Silver Mist’s teleport listeners to the mid-to-late Nineteen Nineties of Hval’s teenagers. Notes of Stereolab and Broadcast waft all through the shiver-inducing “All evening lengthy.” Drum breaks throughout the album trace at Björk’s 1995 album Publish whereas Hval recounts a reminiscence from the identical yr over lingering birdsong on “Lay down.” The economic “The artist is absent” evokes the dank sweat of a rave by which it or its (not-)prolonged(-enough) remix blare within the face of nearing apocalypse. (Y2K25 anxiousness, anybody?) On an ideal, sunny day, the plush, proto-vapor bleeps and bloops of “I would like the top to sound like this” elicit the suspicion of getting wandered by spacetime into the mushy glow of a ’90s {photograph}.
Like a posh but balanced scent, Hval’s newest album perplexes in the easiest way. Dense, multifaceted compositions that please at first cross grow to be jaw-dropping at fifth (or sixth, or seventh, and so on.) repeat pay attention, their quite a few doable musical allusions nonetheless all distinctly Hval. Meditative at instances and invigorating at others, Iris Silver Mist is a delight for the senses, a reminder to pause and luxuriate within the fleeting, extravagant now. (www.jennyhval.com)
Writer score: 8/10
Fee this album
Common reader score: 6/10
