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Sep 13, 2019 Jenny Hval By Christopher Roberts

Norwegian avant-garde musician Jenny Hval has released a new album, The Practice of Love, today via Sacred Bones. Now that the album is out, you can stream the whole thing below. Also below are her upcoming tour dates.

Previously Hval shared The Practice of Love‘s first single, “Ashes to Ashes” (which was one of our Songs of the Week). Then she shared another song from the album, “High Alice” (which was #2 on our Songs of the Week list). Then she shared another song from the album, “Accident,” via a strange video for the track. Frequent collaborator Zia Anger directed the video, which features Anger’s own mother as well as clips from previous Hval videos Anger directed and excerpts from an email conversation between Anger and Hval.

The album is the follow-up to her acclaimed 2016 album, Blood Bitch, and her 2018 EP, The Long Sleep. The album features guest vocalists Vivian Wang, Laura Jean Englert, and Félicia Atkinson. The title The Practice of Love was partially inspired by Valie Export’s 1985 film of the same name.

Hval had this to say about the album in a previous press release: “This all sounds very clichéd, 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?”

Jenny Hval Tour Dates:

Fri. Sept. 20 - Sat. Sept. 21 - Oslo, NO @ Ultima Festival
Sun. Sept. 29 - London, UK @ Milton Court
Wed. Oct. 16 - Frankfurt, DE @ Mousonturm
Wed. Oct. 30 - Paris, FR @ Centre Pompidou
Sat. Nov. 9 - Utrecht, NL @ Le Guess Who? Festival
Sat. Nov. 23 - Katowice, PL @ Ars Cameralis Festival

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