Jenny Hval Is Out for Blood on “Female Vampire”
Do not let Jenny Hval’s high, sweet, otherworldly coo fool you—she is out for blood. The experimental Norwegian artist and writer’s last two (brilliant) albums, 2015’s Apocalypse, girl. and 2013′s Innocence Is Kinky, were rife with bold subversions on gender, religion, and sexuality. Now she’s turned her attention toward something that on the surface sounds almost comical: a time-traveling vampire, whose scenes are set among horror and exploitation films of the 1970s. But on “Female Vampire,” the first single from the forthcoming Blood Bitch, Hval proves what many of her growing cult of fans know to be true: She’s “complex and intellectual,” so if she’s fascinated with vampires, it’s certainly no gimmick.
Indeed, Hval uses the oft-underdeveloped character of the female vampire to explore desire, specifically how we can forget ourselves—oftentimes willingly—amid its pull. She slips towards a darker side with a declaration: “I’m so tired of subjectivity, I must justify my presence by losing it.” And so she goes, letting a throbbing beat lead her into an unlit electronic expanse that seems endless, but not pitch black.
One wonderful thing about Hval’s latter-day avant-pop music—her earliest work flirted with metal—is that she always brings a swirling openness to the sounds, even when they become heavy. Her girl-mystic voice helps a bit with that, in that it automatically introduces a soft dynamic into something hard; that’s a big part of what makes “Female Vampire” so entrancing, but it’s not all. The pulse of this thing—with its growing mob of drum beats, echoes, and various sound effects—will take you over, so perfectly mimicking the subconscious scene Hval evocatively captures. At the very end, she whispers, “It hurts everywhere,” but at least it hurts so good.
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