[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EZEf_mjf58]
Hometown: Oslo, Norway
Jenny Hval doesn’t just sing songs. Rather, she constructs them out of layers of perfectly elongated lyrics that she stretches between guitar chords and keyboard notes. Her provocative music is dissonant and devastating and, at the same time, completely riveting. Hval has an unerring ability to shock and provoke with her frank discussions of gender and sexuality, particularly on her recent fourth album, Innocence is Kinky, which was made with frequent PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish. On it Hval combines spoken word and garage rock, electronic rhythms and torch-song-style singing to create an album that is experimental and challenging and perhaps the most enduring release that the singer/songwriter has put out yet.
Listen: “The Seer”