Jenny Hval Shares Surrealist, Snare-Heavy New Single “High Alice”

Norwegian multidisciplinary wunderkind Jenny Hval has shared the snare-heavy second cut from her forthcoming album The Practice of Love, due Sept. 13 via Sacred Bones, titled “High Alice.”

Lifted by snares, syncopating synths and a drifting saxophone, “High Alice” warps Alice in Wonderland into a sensual and surrealist experience. Instrumentally, the track is staticky and frenetic, but held together by Hval’s vulnerable, lilting vocals and breathy spoken-word: “The ocean / Where I wrote my first poem / With my hand on my skin / With my hand between my thighs.”

Hval lists Clarice Lispector’s “The Hour of the Star” and Kylie Minogue’s “Confide In Me” as sources of inspiration for the track, and the influence of the latter is evident in the stylized art-pop percussion and muted vocals Hval uses in “High Alice.”

“For a while, this song felt like my entire album,” Hval explains in a statement. “‘High Alice’ goes to all the places I have taught myself to avoid, like the four Big Themes: Love, death, life, the ocean. The ocean. The ocean.”

Hval previously released the album’s debut single “Ashes to Ashes” last month, a gauzy, hazy dream of synth and syncopation not unlike the lush atmosphere on “High Alice.”

Hval’s seventh studio album The Practice of Love is set to arrive Sept. 13. You can revisit the album details and Hval’s upcoming tour dates here. Elsewhere, the musician recently announced the 2020 release of her latest novel Girls Against God.

Check out the new song below.