Jenny Hval - The Long Sleep EP

Jenny Hval
The Long Sleep EP
2018
Spotify

It really wouldn't be a complete year unless I was able to review a Jenny Hval album. I've been avoiding this one because Jenny Hval is challenging to listen to. One moment she will go on a spoken word ten minute extravaganza while at another she will create gentle swaying synth pop. Well this album is a little different; instead of her usual conceptual music this album was recorded with a group of jazz musicians as a gentle reflection on life. The first thing you notice is how great Hval's voice sounds here. Her voice is never bad, but on this album it really shines. backed by this somewhat pretty sounds feels like a trip down memory lane for Hval, exploring the things that made her feel in the past, but she still holds on to her experimental ideas. "The Dreamer is Everyone in Her Dream" begins as a bright almost ditty, but then it shifts into something more experimental with Hval's voice spring in and out of existence in some kind of wild echo. Just in case you thought Hval could do an EP without a ten minute song, fear not she makes it happen on the albums title track. It is a process to get through this song as it shifts morphs and changes. Like much of Hvals work this takes at least three minutes to even get started a long time to make someone wait before getting to any real meat of the track. This is not unexpected, but the songs that proceed it make you think this album might be different.

By the 7:30 mark of the song it finally has something of a beat outside of this amorphous swirling quality. Yet the song still progresses and continues to swell, but doesn't have a clear direction. At the end of the track we have some random clicking noises and a strange haunting sound in the distant background, then it ends, abruptly. This is where I get the most frustrated with Hval, sometimes her meandering reaches a point, sometimes it is poignant but other times it is just long. I don't understand how she can think that one noise being made for almost three minutes is anything? Sometimes art just for arts sake is the most frustrating. This album gave me so much hope, like Hval was going to try something totally new and see what happened, but she only dips a toe then falls back on her normal urges. It's a nice record, but it doesn't quite live up to it's own promise.

6.6 out of 10