Jenny Hval Announces New Album The Practice of Love, Releases First Cut

Norwegian singer-songwriter and artist Jenny Hval has announced her latest album The Practice of Love, due out Sept. 13, and has shared its first cut, “Ashes to Ashes.”

Hval’s first return to music since 2018’s The Long Sleep EP, The Practice of Love is described as an expression of “the connection between life and creating art in a specific way—an umbilical magic about relating to others, finding empathy and a common language through speaking, singing and writing together.”

You can find this romantic feeling in “Ashes to Ashes,” a pristine, buzzing wash of synth, clear vocals and syncopation. Hval takes her time to bounce over the track’s hypnotizing magnetic tape and contemplate mortality: “Like I used to dream of fucking before I knew how / I was playing some kind of instrument / It was just a shape in the earth / Like I was playing digging my own grave.”

The album is a gauzy and illusionary departure from 2016’s disorienting Blood Bitch and unspools “with an almost deceptive ease,” per the album’s press release.

“This all sounds very clichéd, like a standard greeting card expression,” Hval said of the album in a statement, “but for me, love, and the practice of love, has been deeply tied to the feeling of otherness. Love as a theme in art has been the domain of the canonized, big artists, and I have always seen myself as a minor character, a voice that speaks of other things.”

The Practice of Love will arrive Sept. 13 via Sacred Bones, and will feature collaborations with Vivian Wang, Laura Jean Englert and Félicia Atkinson.

Check out the new single, the album’s artwork and tracklist, and Hval’s upcoming tour dates below.