Jenny Hval has shared a new song called “Jupiter,” her first single for 4AD. It arrives with a video by Zia Anger, who directed Hval’s visual for “Accident.” Check it out below, along with a string of tour dates for next spring.
Hval shared a statement about “Jupiter”:
When I wrote the music for this song in 2015, it had no lyrics, and I did not understand where it came from. It was a strange creature that moved from one genre to the next like a slide show and crashed into a chorus full of cymbals.
Six years later “Jupiter” has become a post-apocalyptic road trip. It begins by the art installation Prada Marfa in Texas, but turns into a game of identification and absurd imagery. The song winds its way through a desert-scape where values, genres, representation and relationships are breaking down. It tickles our death drive and throws us into space.
In Zia’s music video, that journey has become a psychedelic hot-air balloon ride. The video crew is filmed stepping into the balloon, knowing it is dangerous. That’s how the precarious workforce, including artists and other freelancers, work: high risk, little security. We all just mean so little. The thinnest needle can puncture our lives.
Earlier this year, Hval and multi-instrumentalist Håvard Volden issued Menneskekollektivet, their first LP together as Lost Girls. They’d previously released a two-part EP titled Feeling. Hval’s latest full-length under her own name was 2019’s The Practice of Love, and she released another song titled “Bonus Material” in spring 2020. She also covered Lush’s “Sunbathing” for 4AD’s 40th anniversary covers compilation this past spring.
Jenny Hval:
