“Iris Silver Mist shows music to be as transient as smoke, and yet an enduringly personal portal to memory, selfhood, the present and the dead.”
- The Guardian *****
"A strikingly substantive and rewardingly elusive art-pop album."
- MOJO ****
"An essential listen… A delight for the ears and the nose.”
- Far Out ****
"An artist worthy of the utmost respect and adoration."
- Crack
"Impermanence is a sympton of transformation; on Iris Silver Mist, Hval extols this reality, inviting us to seek out the beauty in each stage. Even a vanishing scent reveals subtle notes as it fades."
- Pitchfork (8.0)
"[Jenny's] albums always feel like projects in the truest sense…very high concept, sort of theoretical but also existential…it never gets too far from the feeling.”
— NPR’s All Songs Considered
Photo Credit - Signe Fuglesteg LuksengardToday, Norwegian musician, artist and novelist Jenny Hval will release her new album, Iris Silver Mist, via 4AD; named a most anticipated album of spring 2025 by NPR’s All Songs Considered, Pitchfork, and Brooklyn Vegan.
+ Buy from 4AD Store on limited pearl Northern Light colour vinyl and standard black vinyl +
+ Listen on all platforms here +
Iris Silver Mist is named after a fragrance made by the nose Maurice Roucel for the French perfume house Serge Lutens. It’s described as smelling more like steel than silver. It is cold and prickly, soft and shimmering, like stepping outside on an early, misty morning, your body still warm from sleep. A perfume, with its heart notes and scented accords, shares its language with music. Both travel through air, simultaneously invisible and distinct.
Iris Silver Mist is very sensual, tactile and intimate—touching you as smells, sounds, and images do when they multiply. During a series of performances last year titled I want to be a Machine, Hval performed many of the tracks on Iris Silver Mist for the first time, before they’d been recorded, and surrounded by rice cookers, filling the songs with the misty smell of rice.
Starting the album with a performance was quite an unusual approach—and it was also an intimate one. Emphasising the importance of the physical and live elements of music, these songs held the experience that was lacking in Hval’s life for so long.
Throughout Iris Silver Mist, perfume continues to turn into smoke, mist, and music. On lead single, 'To be a rose', Hval half-speaks, half-sings to the beat of a drum machine: "A rose is a rose is a rose is a cigarette". Roses and cigarettes are romantic forms of wishful thinking, transporting you someplace else.
Jenny Hval – Iris Silver Mist
4AD0814
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
Jenny Hval will be touring Europe and North America this Spring and Fall, all dates are below.
+ Get information and tickets for Jenny Hval's tour here +
May
21 - Islington Assembly Hall, London, UK*
23rd - Le Nuit Botanique, Brussels, Belgium *
27th - Silent Green (Betonhalle), Berlin, Germany *
30th - Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands
June
5th - Parkteatret, Olso, Norway *
29th - Days Off Festival, Paris, France
September
5th - Lodge Room, Los Angeles CA, US
6th - The Independent, San Francisco CA, US
8th - Polaris, Portland OR, US
10th - Biltmore Cabaret, Vancouver BC, Canada
12th - Sleeping Village, Chicago IL, US
15th - Longboat Hall, Toronto ON, Canada
17th - Williamsburg Music Hall, Brooklyn NY, US
* w/ Thea Grant
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