Eccentric Norwegian experimental pop artist Jenny Hval’s sixth album is steeped in metaphor, where the supernatural and cheesy 70’s horror films, vampires and menstruation, are all enmeshed into a narrative that references childbirth, capitalism, love, the body and bodily functions. Sonically it refuses to be pigeonholed, it’s eccentric, playful, wilfully experimental, silly, surreal, self consciously arty, uncomfortable, even poppy. It’s really quite forward thinking, where melodies, noise, found sound, musique concrete, gothic synth pop, spoken word and weirdo cross genre gestures intersect. Hval sings too, more than on previous outings, offering gentle crooning or intoning wordlessly over abstract yet strange and spooky, yet somehow reassuring sonics.
It’s a dense album, its threads aren’t immediately obvious, and it takes some time to unravel. Yet bit-by-bit it does, and as it reveals, it continues to reward – even if you only understand, or think you understand a few moments here and there – more than likely inventing your own narrative.
“What’s this album about Jenny?” asks an enthusiastic disembodied voice in the beginning of ‘The Great Undressing’. “It’s about vampires,” she replies, before adding that it’s “about more things than that but a large theme is…”“That’s so basic,” intercuts the voice laughing.
This is an album about vampires, an album about blood, an album about femininity. But there’s a space missing that connects it all, and that space is you.
“Don’t be afraid it’s only blood,” she offers in ‘Period Piece’. Other song titles include ‘In The Red’ and ‘Untamed Region’.
It’s an album that effectively marries the avant-garde with pop sensibilities. It’s one long feverish dream, where everything is a little bit blurry and intangible.
‘In the Red’ is ostensibly musique concrete where footsteps are pared with hyperventilating panting, and the almost imperceptible proclamation ‘it hurts…everywhere’ under a shrill cry. Is this a birth? A panic attack?
It’s followed by one of her more poppier moments, the single ‘Conceptual Romance’, though when you listen closely you realise its simply a series of bass drones with a few skittering beats over which Hval offers impossibly long melodic vocal lines – which makes the notion that this is somehow pop totally ludicrous. Yet that’s what this album does to you. It’s so diverse and signposted by truly odd and idiosyncratic moments that you reach out for vague memories, odd reminiscences of sound that may or may not really be there. Perhaps this is why Blood Bitch has felt so elusive. It’s undoubtedly intelligent, brimming with a myriad of fascinating ideas, and has a peculiar and very idiosyncratic approach to sound, but you can’t help but shake the feeling that though you may buy this album, you’ll never truly possess it. The best you can hope for is to be possessed by it periodically and continue to delve deeper into this remarkable and fascinating piece of art.
