Jenny Hval isn’t the only artist to have used the pandemic as a chance to reassess the creative process. The challenge the Norwegian polymath set herself as she wrote the eight songs on her eighth album was for them to be about “just me”. Whether that’s what she has achieved is open to interpretation: these songs have autobiographical starting points, but Hval’s lyrics are so rich in allusion and so full of unpredictable twists and turns (American Coffee, for example, takes in Deleuze-quoting nurses and a UTI-tainted cinema trip) that it’s hard to know where reality ends and metaphysical pondering begins. Either way, “What is a home but the place you’ll be dying?” is a sentiment that’s unlikely to ever feature in estate agents’ brochures.
That she uses language so strikingly should come as no surprise – Hval is also a published novelist. And a palette big on muted, unshowy electronica complements her words perfectly, providing a platform for her seraphic voice to glide across and giving these songs a dreamlike quality. There’s nothing here that’s particularly immediate, the likes of Cemetery of Splendour only gradually yielding their delights. Instead, Classic Objects is unceasingly intriguing.
