Jenny Hval might have not earned the appreciation she deserved with either the bands she was a part of or the solo moniker Rockettothesky, but under her real name, particularly regarding her last two albums on New York's Sacred Bones Records, she has finally drawn in the attention that was long overdue.
Blood Bitch is her sixth album (fourth under her real name), co-produced by her and acclaimed Norwegian noise producer Lasse Marhaug. It dropped one year after her previous effort, Apocalypse, Girl which attracted a lot of new listeners to her art. Blood Bitch is a concept album that draws much influence from 1970s horror and exploitation films, vampires, menstruation and Virginia Woolf, and while Hval describes it as her most fictional work so far, she considers it to also be her most personal one.
Regarding the single, Conceptual Romance, Jenny writes on her website:
"Chord changes, melodic phrases and rhythmic pulses can have mystical qualities. They can tell you things words alone couldn’t: In a flash they explain to your heart that you really are broken, or that you really are dying (sooner or later). But they also have a strong desire to tell you that it’s okay, that you can feel better. They are a way to make sense of your own impermanence. The key is in the change of chords or notes, the restlessness of moving on. The strength of a song is its fragility.
Conceptual Romance is one of these songs. It could be making sense of impermanence, failure and overlooked artwork, but it could also be making sense of the eternal. A floor plan of eternity. A love song for a vampire stuck in erotic self-oscillation. Or maybe just myself."
The video for Conceptual Romance that follows is directed by Zia Anger, while the one for Female Vampire is directed by Jenny Berger-Myhre.
Watch and listen below...
ZR