Jenny Hval – ‘Iris Silver Mist’ album review: a delight for the ears and nose
THE SKINNY: Norwegian ambient pop artist Jenny Hval has always loved a concept, with themes of eroticism being explored on 2013’s Innocence is Kinky and femininity through a vampyric/menstrual lens on 2018’s Blood Bitch. However, while these two records lend themselves to visceral reactions that excite the imagination, her latest effort, Iris Silver Mist, is one that is designed to excite the sense of smell above all else.
In the time since her last release, 2022’s Classic Objects, Hval felt the need to explore a different approach to songwriting, almost removing herself entirely from the processes she had used before and attempting to conjure ideas through an absence of music. During the pandemic, when live performance was no longer an option for artists, Hval found herself paying attention to other sensory experiences around the home and developed a penchant for perfume.
Named for the fragrance made by Maurice Roucel, Iris Silver Mist is meant to invoke the sense of smell with its textures that emulate everything from floral scents to distant cigarette smoke, surrounding the listener with familiar odours that are both pleasant and repugnant. While there is more beauty on display than there is disgust, Hval’s constant attention to detail remains one of her strengths as she navigates her way through a tapestry of experimental pop songs.
Perhaps the best environment to experience this album is one where scented candles surround you, or even going as far as to deprive yourself of sight, touch and taste in order to heighten the need to use the remaining two senses. It’s an album full of delicate intricacies that only reveal themselves to you upon close inspection, and to resist the need to fully engage with its sensory delights is to ignore the sublime concept of the record.
It might seem unusual to use anything but your ear canals to experience a record in full, but trust me, your nostrils will be in for a treat when you allow Iris Silver Mist to hit you with full force.
For fans of: Stepping out of the house and opening the airways so they can be hit with all the pleasant springtime scents.
A concluding comment from an olfactory-auditory synesthete: “I’m getting notes of lavender, fresh linen and vanilla here. An essential listen to all fans of soft smells.”
Iris Silver Mist track by track:
Release Date: May 2nd | Producer: Jenny Hval & Håvard Volden | Label: 4AD
‘Lay down’: Hval lays down the soft palette of sounds from the beginning, with her ever-delicate vocals gliding over the top of some new age synths. There’s an incredible warmth to the track, even when the full band comes in, so much so that you want to do as the title says and lie down in it and let it envelop you. [4/5]
‘To be a rose’: There’s a bit of a vibrato to the vocals on this song, and while it’s incredibly simple, Hval has never really been a maximalist. You’re given the opportunity to focus on every bit of detail as she brings in the first obvious inspiration from the various scents that helped shape the album, with the contrast of a rose and cigarette smoke playing off each other, one sweet and one acrid. [4/5]
‘I want to start at the beginning’: There are a number of pieces on the record that function as interludes, with the vocals being a little more obscured under a wash of synths. It’s a pretty addition to the record, but one that feels like it has to be digested as part of the album, unlike the others, which function just as well alone. [3.5/5]
‘All night long’: You can sense a bit of a jazz influence coming into play on this track, which weaves its way through several distinct moods. The beginning feels like it’s lost in a dreamlike daze, before becoming a little more sinister and mournful outside the chorus sections. Some of the lyrics refer back to the feelings of absence and loss that were prevalent in the pandemic, but at no point do these references feel trite. [4.5/5]
‘Heiner Muller’: Another connecting tissue between songs, on which Hval gently serenades the listener in the rain. It might be short, but in its brevity, it feels like she’s captured an off-the-cuff expression of her feelings while sheltering herself from the elements on her porch. [4/5]
‘You died’: This song is all about the layers of percussion, which feel like they’re so deliberately placed sparingly over a constant driving drum beat and sustained synth string chords. Every time a distant echo of a conga hits or a tom-tom rapidly comes in and out of the foreground, it feels as though you’re being hit with a new sensation to adjust yourself to and process while life goes on as normal around you. [4/5]
‘Spirit mist’: Another interlude which makes use of field recordings. Hval is out walking on a gravelly path while some sort of machinery churns away over the top of a half-remembered melody and some delicate piano chords. By the end, everything has been swallowed by an ever-morphing arpeggiated synthesiser. You kind of get the feeling that this album isn’t just about sound and smell, but wants to arouse all of the other senses. [3.5/5]
‘I don’t know what free is’: The arpeggios from ‘Spirit mist’ run into the beginning of this track, but eventually we’re led to a unique electronic take on Martin Denny-esque exotica, with more of the percussion from ‘You died’ returning to embellish what is quite a simple song and turn it into a fascinatingly crafted palette of sounds. By the end, it’s Hval at her most pop, until the random pitch shift to a sudden halt. Quite the journey for a song under five minutes. [4.5/5]
‘The artist is absent’: This feels akin to early Tirzah with its electronic beats and understated vocal melodies, and how it finishes abruptly before it has the chance to show off everything it has to offer. It would be great to hear more of this track as it feels like an outlier on the record, but its vignette-like state is still somehow in keeping with everything else. [3.5/5]
‘Huffing my arm’: Another brief track, although this one feels a bit too formless in comparison to some of the others. Considering the dramatic change that the previous track presented, it feels as if this sequence of interludes would have worked better separated from each other. [3/5]
‘The gift’: Hval is really gunning for the art pop angle at the back end of the album, with the tempo and dynamics beginning to ramp up. It still has this dreamlike quality, but you sense that the album has grown from being simplistic into a far more overwhelming beast. [4/5]
‘A ballad’: The gentleness returns after things began to spiral over the last few tracks. It’s not to say that Hval is at her best when she’s more minimalist, but her voice is offered more of an opportunity to be a focal point, which it deserves to be. The breathy choirs in the background are a beautiful textural addition, one that makes it all the more inviting. [4/5]
‘I want the end to sound like this’: A dizzying instrumental finale which whisks you on a journey through all of the sensory experiences that the record has to offer. If you’ve been on board with the album since the beginning, this will feel like a suitably satisfying way to end things, but if you’ve been drifting in and out and not giving it your full attention, then prepare to be sent into overload. [4/5]
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