Born in Oslo in 1980, Jenny Hval sang in other people’s bands, and studied creative writing and performance in Melbourne, before she started recording under her own name (she has also traded as Rockettothesky). Her music, though often disjointed and elliptical, can be disarmingly frank, funny and heartfelt. The third Jenny Hval album, Apocalypse, girl, was released in June.
What have you been doing since the album came out?
Touring, mostly, in Europe and America, and developing the show in strange ways. For this album we’ve done everything from playing as a duo to big shows with nine people on stage doing movements. There’ve been a lot of wigs – some wig-shopping, some wig-stealing. Some very dirty fitness balls…
You stole a wig?
I didn’t steal it, it was stolen from me. You know the way some people steal set lists? They try to steal other stuff from the stage too. In Vancouver I had to chase a guy down a street to get my yoga ball back, and someone else – or maybe the same guy – stole the wig I was wearing. But it’s been really fun.
The London show I saw in June was closer to performance art than a conventional gig – there were more costumes and cameras on stage than instruments. Is this a new approach?
Yes. Before this album, my live shows were mainly singing and playing with a band – no costumes involved. But it would have taken eight or nine musicians to play these new songs from scratch and I didn’t want to do that. With this material I think it’s more interesting to live inside it than to arrange it.
After you’ve recorded a song or an album, does it continue to evolve?
As long as I’m playing stuff that’s still quite fresh to me, it does. But after a while, listening back to an old album is excruciating. It’s like, what is this? So whenever I’m asked to play old stuff, I can’t do it. I don’t know how to play it. It’s lost. That’s probably quite unusual in an artist in the pop world…
I imagine a lot of musicians get tired of revisiting old songs.
Well I’m not sure if that’s true. I think a lot of musicians really enjoy giving the audience what they love. I guess I don’t [laughs]. Luckily I’m still very much enjoying playing this album.
How did Apocalypse, girl take shape? Is your writing process unusual in any way?
Actually, I think I write like everybody else. The difference comes down to personality more than process. After many years of trying to explain how I write, I’ve come back to the idea that maybe I’m just weird.
Do you search far and wide for inspiration?
I watch films and think about abstract soundscapes. A lot of studying goes into my music, but it’s like a drunken, rambling version of academic work that doesn’t quite come together. So it can take me a long time to get from an initial idea to what actually ends up on an album.
Did you always want to be a musician?
No, I always wanted to be a writer – music was something I did on the side. In a way, I did it to explore the stuff that I was studying. I realised that when I did something creative it would sound really sad and normal compared to the great ideas I was exploring in my studies of avant garde art. I would sit at home writing songs that sounded very pleasant and mundane even though they were about highbrow philosophers. I used to be very embarrassed about that for years, but now I kind of love it: being direct, harsh and elitist on the one hand, and human, natural and almost mundane on the other.
• Jenny Hval plays the Soup Kitchen in Manchester on 8 November, the Lantern in Bristol on 9 November and the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, London N1 on 11 November
