Today sees the release of Classic Objects, Jenny Hval's 4AD debut record.

The album is now available digitally, on blue vinyl (indies & 4AD store), tan vinyl (Vinyl Me Please), standard black vinyl and CD. 

+ Buy Classic Objects on blue vinyl and CD from the 4AD Store here +
+ Buy and stream the album from all retailers here +

"Her most unified mind-body work to date, melody-filled art-pop that deals with the nature of self and the freedom of the unconscious."
- Pitchfork - 8.0
"Some of the most unabashed beauty Hval has ever allowed into her writing.”
- Stereogum (Album of the Week)
"No musician has yet to dissect the feminine body's currency and pliancy under capitalism quite like Jenny Hval”
- NPR
"[Classic Objects contains] intricate and immaculately arranged songs, both [Hval’s] prettiest and her most accessible […] These songs are easy to get lost in, to get hypnotized by”
- Treble, Album of the Week
"This is untethered, uncluttered music, made with real heart by an artist at her peak.​" 
- The Skinny
"What on previous records had created something ethereal and untouchable here generates something altogether more physical and tactile"
- DIY

Classic Objects is Hval’s version of a pop album. While there are interchangeable moments of complexity in each song, there’s a feeling of elevation and clarity in the songs’ choruses. This is evident with new single ‘Freedom’, which unfurls with a resonating melody as Hval’s honeyed voice presciently sings: “Out there is the world // where you’re threatening the lives // of fragile individuals when you stir in the mud. // Look to the birds, // to the crowds that have dispersed // in the wounded air that we call freedom.” The song’s accompanying video is another collaboration from the trio of Hval, Annie Bielski and Jenny Berger Mhyre following their work together on the ambitious ‘Year of Love’ video.

“I don’t know what freedom is. This song doesn't either. The lyrics are bombastic and silly, as if written by a political folk song generator. Nonetheless the song was needed on my record - I needed something short and sweet after a series of long, layered reflections.

“I imagine it being sung in a courtroom or in parliament when the debate gets too heated and everyone needs a break. In this imagined moment, everyone is singing in unison.

“This is the only way I can describe Freedom - as a kind of performative moment that breaks up the structure, language and ambivalence of the rest of the record. On its own, it seems weirdly clear and pure. I can’t really defend it. Or perhaps it is myself I can’t defend. The song is necessary. It just reminds me of the fact that I am not.” - Jenny Hval

“In 2020, like everyone else, I was just a private person,” says Hval. “No artists were allowed to perform. I was reduced to ‘just me.’” As a result, Hval questioned what “just me” could mean.

As an exercise, Hval wrote straight-forward stories about life, investigating the stripped-down “just me” concept. When Hval started writing stories that eventually became this record, the pandemic hit and she remembered specific times in her life that felt completely stripped of value; like when a celiac diagnosis halted the start of her music career. Hval elaborates: “This made me want to write simple stories. My problem was that I found that the music component in the writing process made the words stray from their path and even jump into the absurd. I think it is just bound to happen when there is music involved. After all, a song isn’t just words, it has a melody, and the reason we have melodies is to step into the dark and jump off cliffs.”

The resulting Classic Objects is a map of places; past places, like the old empty Melbourne pubs Hval’s band used to play in, public places Hval missed throughout lockdown, imagined, future places, and impossible places where dreams, hallucinations, death and art can take you. It is interested in combining heavenly things and plain things. 

Jenny Hval - Classic Objects 
4AD0431
1. Year of Love
2. American Coffee
3. Classic Objects
4. Cemetery of Splendour
5. Year of Sky
6. Jupiter
7. Freedom
8. The Revolution Will Not Be Owned
 

Get tickets to see Jenny Hval on tour here.

Jenny Hval 2022 Tour 

March 
11th - Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
17th - Kulturhuset | Bergen, Bergen, Norway
18th - Tou Scene, Stavanger, Norway
26th - Dokkhuset, Trondheim, Norway

April
5th - Fasching, Stockholm, Sweden
6th - Bremen Teater, Copenhagen, Denmark
7th - Columbia Theater, Berlin, Germany 
9th - BRDCST Festival, Brussels, Belgium
10th - Rewire Festival, Den Haag, Netherlands
11th - EartH, London, England
13th - La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, France

May
9th - Arts at the Armory, Boston, MA, US
10th - Elsewhere, Brooklyn, NY, US
11th - PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA, US
13th - Miracle Theatre, Washington, DC, US
14th - Skully’s, Columbus, OH, US
15th - Constellation, Chicago, IL, US
16th - Constellation, Chicago, IL, US
17th - Lee’s Palace, Tornto, ON, US
20th - Neumos, Seattle, WA, US
21st - Holocene, Portland, OR, US
24th - Starline Social Club, Oakland, CA, US 
25th - Lodge Room, Los Angeles, CA, US
21st - Holocene, Portland, OR, US
24th - Starline Social Club, Oakland, CA, US

June
4th - Primavera Festival, Barcelona, Spain