Jenny Hval
photo by Lasse Marhaug

Jenny Hval releasing new LP 'The Practice of Love' (listen to "Ashes to Ashes")

Norwegian artist Jenny Hval announced The Practice of Love, the follow-up to her excellent 2016 LP Blood Bitch, due out September 13 via Sacred Bones. Its title is inspired, in part, by Valie Export’s 1985 film of the same name, and its lyrics explore what’s often considered a pedestrian topic, love, but in a way only she could. As a press release points out, its lyrics also “hew more closely to poetic forms than anything Hval has made before (as evidenced by the record’s liner notes, which assume the form of a poetry chapbook).”

“This all sounds very clichéd,” Jenny says, “like a standard greeting card expression. But for me, love, and the practice of love, has been deeply tied to the feeling of otherness. Love as a theme in art has been the domain of the canonized, big artists, and I have always seen myself as a minor character, a voice that speaks of other things. But in the last few years I have wanted to take a closer look at the practice of otherness, this fragile performance, and how it can express love, intimacy, empathy and desire. I have wanted to ask bigger, wider, kind of idiotic questions like: What is our job as a member of the human race? Do we have to accept this job, and if we don’t, does the pressure to be normal ever stop?” See the cover art and tracklisting below.

Jenny worked with collaborators Vivian Wang, Laura Jean Englert, and Félicia Atkinson on some of the album’s songs, although not first single “Ashes to Ashes,” which you can listen to below. It has a similar pop immediacy to material from her 2018 EP The Long Sleep. “I wanted to give the feeling of being apart from the world a mystical, but beautiful place, meaning pop songs,” Jenny says. “A place that also contains enough depth to bury oneself in.”

Jenny is playing some shows this fall to support The Practice of Love, but nothing in North America (at least so far). Those shows include a previously announced appearance at Utrecht’s Le Guess Who? Festival. See all of her upcoming dates below.

Jenny Hval – The Practice of Love Tracklisting
1. Lions (feat. Vivian Wang)
2. High Alice
3. Accident (feat. Laura Jean)
4. The Practice of Love (feat. Laura Jean and Vivian Wang)
5. Ashes To Ashes
6. Thumbsucker (feat. Félicia Atkinson and Laura Jean)
7. Six Red Cannas (feat. Vivian Wang, Félicia Atkinson and Laura Jean)
8. Ordinary (feat. Vivian Wang and Félicia Atkinson)

Jenny Hval - The Practice of Love

Jenny Hval: 2019 Tour
Fri. Sept. 20 – Sat. Sept. 21 – Oslo, NO @ Ultimate Oslo Contemporary Music Festival
Fri. Sept. 20 – Sat. Sept. 21 – Oslo, NO @ Black Box teater
Sun. Sept. 29 – London, UK @ Milton Court
Tue. Oct. 15 – Frankfurt, DE @ Mousonturm
Wed. Oct. 16 – Frankfurt, DE @ Mousonturm
Sat. Nov. 9 – Utrecht, NL @ Le Guess Who? Festival