Album Review: The Long Sleep [EP] by Jenny Hval

The four-track offering is a rather wild journey, in that it refuses to offer anything up easily. Instead, it allows its intricate layers to build up to whatever it is they eventually come to stoke inside of you. The smooth, saxophone tinged intro of "Spells" lays in front of you a gentle and serene scene. Delicate instrumentation wraps around itself, while Hval's vocal takes charge of proofing the album's title with the repetitive refrain of "we will not be awake for long".

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2016 marked the year that Norwegian artist Jenny Hval's talents truly came to a glorious fruition with the scarlet reflections of Blood Bitch. That bold yet beautiful work delved into the uncomfortable taboo of menstruation, and capitalism's vampiric thirst and its effect on the artist; on first listen The Long Sleep EP is a much gentler prospect. Lead single "Spells" opens with a fluttering piano line and smoky reeds, before developing into one of the most melodically accessible tracks Hval has recorded.

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Few artists will have a more productive 2018 than Jenny Hval. In March, the genre-defying Norwegian artist released a twelve-inch in two parts with long-time collaborator Håvard Volden under the name Lost Girls, and her debut novel, Paradise Rot, will arrive in October.   Sandwiched between those, The Long Sleep could have been an afterthought, but Hval doesn't deal in half measures. Her latest EP expands previous thematic preoccupations into bold, affecting new territory.   The big, intimidating issues are still present — music ….

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While listening to these two releases (and to some extent, with the wisty mist turned down, 2016’s Blood Bitch), one can almost picture Hval, for all her disassociative flair, doing stock, montagey normal things like carefully assessing kindergarten drawings, gliding around the circle of kids, irradiated in shivering warmth. In other words, there is occasionally something mildly mundane and domestic about her strangeness, harrowing as it can be. It’s a curious wrinkle, but the artist’s dominating humor is actually more often intrepid or exultant.

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