★★★★★
By taking the listener down into a cavernous chamber of stream-of-conscious musings on , Jenny Hval invites us to a haunting vision of desire and frustration. Spoken word, drum loops, organs and synths craft an ethereal dream that is punctured by the dark subject matter of the lyrics. Hval delves into sexuality frequently, with opening track "Kingsize" touching on gender roles and indefinable malaise...
- exclaim.ca
2015-06-09
★★★★★
Experimental singer/songwriter Jenny Hval's work is cryptically pleasurable, prone to breeding obsession, and full of surprises. As she mentions several times throughout Apocalypse, girl, she recorded her latest album when she was 33, and like a lot of people in their Jesus year she found herself at an existential crossroads...
- pitchfork.com
2015-06-09
★★★★★
What is soft dick rock? However one might go about answering Jenny Hval's initial question on Apocalypse, girl, the Norwegian artist uses her fifth album to continue investigating themes of dominance, security, and vulnerability as subjective experiences within the confines of her abstract pop. Hval's dick is delicate in its soft state; it's portrayed in a vulnerable light, cupped by hands and hidden from view; it's sheltered and re-sexualized and cast into the limelight of the opening two...
- www.tinymixtapes.com
2015-06-08
★★★★★
"What is it to take care of yourself?" Jenny Hval wonders near the start of her curious, frequently brilliant new album, the third she's put out under her own name. The answers she wryly proposes range from the capitalistic ("fighting for visibility in your market") to the abject ("not making a fool of yourself") to the autoerotic: a familiar progression in the Norwegian's work, which is nothing if not frank about sex...
- www.theguardian.com
2015-06-07
★★★★★
In 1969 feminist Carol Hanisch wrote an essay called The Personal Is Political. It was her response to criticism that the 'consciousness raising' meetings she was organising were not political, but personal. The meetings were therapy, said the critics; navel-gazing at the expense of bringing down the system. "They belittled us no end for trying to bring our so-called personal problems into the public arena - especially all those body issues like sex, appearance and abortion," Hanisch wrote...
- thequietus.com
2015-06-12
★★★★★
While many musicians are happy to stick a "na-na-na," a "baby, baby" or any old throwaway rubbish over their thoughtless three-chord ditties, Jenny Hval is determined to push her language just as far as her music. Sitting somewhere between bawdy poet, avant-garde Ballardian sci-fi author, experimental composer, and actual pop star, Hval's unique brain is jam-packed with ideas, many of them a little bit filthy...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2015-06-06
★★★★★
When will the battle be over? When you no longer have to appropriate the cultural forms of dominant (or different groups) to prove you can do them just as well? When you no longer have to parody, subvert, or exaggerate representations by the dominant group to expose their absurdity? When you no longer have to forge your own language by looking in the cracks between extant idioms, but can avail yourself of all...
- www.drownedinsound.com
2015-06-05
★★★★★
Like and , Norwegian artist presents a version of female sexuality in which carnal impulses, anxieties and the female/male perspective are often knotted together. Her 2013 John Parish-produced album Innocence Is Kinky translated theories on identity and gender inequality into confrontational art-pop, starting with her watching porn. Its followup could also keep you busy for days...
- www.theguardian.com
2015-06-05
★★★★★
Both Jenny Hval and Susanna Wallumrød have proven themselves two of the strongest, most passionate voices in contemporary Scandinavian song, and on their first album-length collaboration, they prove to be a hypnotically symbiotic creative force. Drawing inspiration from filmmaker Maya Deren, , sees these songwriters and performers both channeling their strengths and taking surprising risks, as though each is pushing the other into somewhat uncomfortable yet endorphin-surging corners of their...
- us5.campaign-archive2.com
2014-09-17
Loading...
