“What is it to take care of yourself?” Jenny Hval wonders near the start of her curious, frequently brilliant new album, the third she’s put out under her own name. The answers she wryly proposes range from the capitalistic (“fighting for visibility in your market”) to the abject (“not making a fool of yourself”) to the autoerotic: a familiar progression in the Norwegian’s work, which is nothing if not frank about sex. Apocalypse, Girl is at once plaintive, savagely ironic and disconcertingly funny – behold the banana imagery in the opening track Kingsize – and the music teeters between harmony and dissonance. Hval’s ethereal voice floats above it, negotiating the balance with exquisite poise.
