Album Review: Classic Objects by Jenny Hval

"Classic Objects," the title track of Norwegian artist Jenny Hval's latest record, starts with her recalling a painter in her first studio space, while faint, loose guitar strings hang in the background. "She used to attach/Her own hair onto her paintings," Hval sings, using the memory as a jumping point to contemplate life and death, the purpose of art. Importantly, the key to the song, and the entire album, lies in the two lines: "I mean, life and art, or is it death?/Or maybe it’s just me?" Classic Objects is an album of stories and meditations.

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"Look at these trees / Look at this grass / Look at those clouds," intoned the Observatory's Vivian Wang at the outset of Jenny Hval's 2019 record The Practice of Love. She continued, surveying a moist, minuscule universe of mushrooms and small blue flowers: "Study this and ask yourself / Where is God?" "Cemetery of Splendour" -- the clicking, chirruping centrepiece of Hval's latest record, Classic Objects -- finds the Norwegian avant-pop sorcerer in a similar state of wonderment. "Trees, stick, rocks / Bamboo leaf / Bamboo leaf again / Then the branch / The branch / The pinecone!" she says giddily, a smile stretching her words like taffy.

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Empty like my childhood, high above the streets Even if I have a fancy new "staff" designation next to my name, I'm really not at all the informed choice to review Jenny Hval's latest record. While the artist's name has been on my radar for years, I've never heard any of her work (even a single song) up until this very week. Partly, this is because Hval's music often gets lumped into the "art pop" style, and my personal feeling is that, while some art pop is good, more often than not this type of thing ends up being rather bland, aiming for artsiness to distract from a fatal lack of good hooks.

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Jenny Hval has described 'Classic Objects' as being "interested in combining heavenly things and plain things," and therein arguably lies a primer for all of the Norwegian polymath's work. Hval's albums carry certain known quantities - soaring vocals in the chorus, reflections on the human body and society's prismatic distortions of it, lyrics seemingly written with no consideration paid to rhythm or meter - but the intersection of the divine and the mundane feels like an essential theme. Regardless, Hval's music remains endlessly fresh and innovative.

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