Every Monday, 88Nine music director Erin Wolf shares a sonic gem she found using her nearly 20 years of new-music exploration experience. You can hear all her discoveries at 2 p.m. every Sunday on What’s All This: Adventures in New Music.
Norwegian singer-songwriter, producer and novelist Jenny Hval just announced her newest record, Iris Silver Mist, led by the heady “To be a rose,” in which Hval uses the power of scent (in this case, the titular flower) to transport herself.
In fact, the album title comes from the name of a perfume, so consider this collection of songs a total olfactory journey. During the pandemic, Hval rediscovered her love of perfume for the first time since she was a teenager, and that exerted a lot of influence on the record. She says of the sensory lead single:
It was written as a restless pop structure with a chorus, 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. It’s 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.
Hear Jenny Hval’s “To be a rose” on the latest episode of What’s All This by using the player at the top of the page, and find Iris Silver Mist out May 2 on 4AD Records. I’ll be back with another batch of songs at 2 p.m. next Sunday (and every Sunday) on What’s All This: Adventures in New Music.
Best new indie music this week
- Deerhoof, “Sparrow Sparrow”
- The Bug Club, “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales”
- Wishy, “Fly”
- Djo, “Delete Ya”
- Momma, “Bottle Blonde”
- Perfume Genius, “No Front Teeth (ft. Aldous Harding)”
- Hovvdy, “Shooting Star (ft. runo plum)”
- Jenny Hval, “To be a rose
- Deradoorian, “Set Me Free”
- Everything Is Recorded, “Never Felt Better (ft. Sampha and Florence Welch)”
- Shura, “Richardson (ft. Cassandra Jenkins)”
- MRCY, “MAN”
