Norwegian artist and musician Jenny Hval claims our No. 3 spot for the year. We've enjoyed Hval for a few years now, but it wasn't until we saw her perform at this year's Big Ears Festival that we really came to appreciate her.
Hval so openly and intimately communicates with her audience that it's almost disorienting. We expect some distance between our performers and ourselves and even take some comfort in that distance. We expect musicians to sing lyrics about events in their own, separate lives or to communicate big ideas about abstract issues or current events. We're used to them hiding behind instrumentation, clever wordplay, and carefully constructed personae. We expect them to stay on stage, or at least of the opposite side of the speakers.
Hval has no use for this. What's the point of saying something if you're not communicating, and what's the point of communicating if it's not real and intimate? What barriers are there left to be overcome between the artist and the observer? She closes out her 2018 EP The Long Sleep by noting, among other things, "There should be something I could tell you, there should be something I could do to reach you directly, but there is nothing useful in the way we define 'you' or 'me' in this context."
In some respects, Hval's approach reminds me of the American poet Walt Whitman, who in his Carol of Words, asks the reader, "Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? Those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea. They are in the air—they are in you."
As Hval puts it, "It’s not in the words. It’s not in the rhythm. It’s not in the message. It’s not in the product. It’s not in the algorithms. It's not in the streaming. It’s not something you decided. It’s not something they decided for you."
Hval so openly and intimately communicates with her audience that it's almost disorienting. We expect some distance between our performers and ourselves and even take some comfort in that distance. We expect musicians to sing lyrics about events in their own, separate lives or to communicate big ideas about abstract issues or current events. We're used to them hiding behind instrumentation, clever wordplay, and carefully constructed personae. We expect them to stay on stage, or at least of the opposite side of the speakers.
Hval has no use for this. What's the point of saying something if you're not communicating, and what's the point of communicating if it's not real and intimate? What barriers are there left to be overcome between the artist and the observer? She closes out her 2018 EP The Long Sleep by noting, among other things, "There should be something I could tell you, there should be something I could do to reach you directly, but there is nothing useful in the way we define 'you' or 'me' in this context."
In some respects, Hval's approach reminds me of the American poet Walt Whitman, who in his Carol of Words, asks the reader, "Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? Those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea. They are in the air—they are in you."
As Hval puts it, "It’s not in the words. It’s not in the rhythm. It’s not in the message. It’s not in the product. It’s not in the algorithms. It's not in the streaming. It’s not something you decided. It’s not something they decided for you."
Whitman: "Were you thinking that those were the words—those delicious sounds out of your friends’ mouths? No, the real words are more delicious than they."
Hval: "Maybe that's what I'm trying here, something else than lyrics or melody."
But you have to hear her to believe her sincerity. Give I Want To Tell You Something 1 minute and 21 seconds of your time. It could change your life, and there's few songs you can say that about. If we programmed the widget above correctly, you can stream other songs from The Long Sleep EP after hearing I Want To Tell You Something, and trust us, you'll want to.
Live, Hval was weird (in a good way), whip-smart, and funny. Hers was one of the more unique performances at Big Ears, a festival with no small number of unique performers.
So Jenny Hval comes in at No. 3 in our Best Seven list. That's five songs down and two left to go. Are you still with us?
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| Jenny Hval (center) making music with iPhones at Big Ears 2018 |
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