Jenny Hval The Practice Of Love
Matters of life and death from Norwegian avant-gardist. THINGS LEARNED from records: the Norwegian word for “love” (“kjaerlighet”) contains the whole word for “honesty” (“aerlighet”). This, says Jenny Hval on The Practice Of Love’s title track,
“makes it sound religious, Protestant, hierarchic… the word love comes in the way of love.” As the menstrual gothic of 2016’s Blood Bitch stressed, Hval’s work is never casual, but here she handles heavy subjects with a lighter touch: the drive to create art or life, for example, or what it means to have skin in the survival-of-the-species game. Lions issues a Yoko Ono-style challenge – “Look at those clouds… ask yourself, where is God?” – while Robyn and Björk fuse on Accident’s existential querying and dream-song Ashes To Ashes. Hval deals in big cerebral questions, but these songs – intimate, intricately fleshed out – have roots in both body and mind.
Victoria Segal