Norwegian auteur Jenny Hval will release her new album ‘Iris Silver Mist’ on May 2nd.
The material for the record was constructed in the last few years, and – unusually – Jenny Hval aired it with some emphatic performances last year. The title is a reference to a fragrance made by the nose Maurice Roucel for the French perfume house Serge Lutens, and scent plays a key role in the project – Jenny even started rice cookers before those inaugural performances, filling the theatres with the smell of cooked rice.
Out on May 2nd via 4AD, ‘Iris Silver Mist’ features 13 songs, introduced by lead single ‘To be a rose’.
The chorus – “A rose is a rose is a rose is a cigarette” – echoes Gertrude Stein’s famous line, while also acting as a meditation on scent, beauty, and pollution.
Calling it a “restless” pop song, Jenny Hval comments:
It has a chorus, with chords and a melody, but each chorus sounds slightly different, like we are experiencing the melody from different seasons, decades or even different bodies. The clichéd rose metaphor in the song is equally restless. It can change shape into a cigarette and then evaporate to smoke.
My mother and I (two restless humans) are both present in the song: ‘I was singing in my room, she smoked on the balcony/Long inhales and long exhales performed in choreography.’ If about anything, ‘To be a rose’ is about how one thing becomes another thing, how we all come from somewhere and someone, and how this is stranger and more powerful than we think.
Director Jenny Merger Myhre pieced together the video from archival footage shot on various tours from 2015-2024.
Tap in below.
Tracklist
1. Lay down
2. To be a rose
3. I want to start at the beginning
4. All night long
5. Heiner muller
6. You died
7. Spirit mist
8. I don’t know what free is
9. The artist is absent
10. Huffing my arm
11. The gift
12. A ballad
13. I want the end to sound like this
Photo Credit: Jenny Berger Myhre
