Jenny Hval has shared details of a new album, titled Iris Silver Mist.
Marking the Norwegian artist’s second full-length record for 4AD, it’s comprised of 13 tracks and is named after a fragrance made by Maurice Roucel for French perfume house Serge Lutens. Many of the songs featured on the LP were first debuted by Hval last year during a series of live performances titled I want to be a machine.
Accompanying the album’s announcement, Hval has shared lead single ‘To be a rose’, which you can watch a video for below. The visual is pieced together from footage shot on various live tours that the artist embarked on between 2015 and 2024.
Speaking about the track itself, Hval said: “‘To be a rose’ was written as a restless pop structure. It has a chorus, with chords and a melody, but each chorus sounds slightly different, like we are experiencing the melody from different seasons, decades or even different bodies. The clichéd rose metaphor in the song is equally restless. It can change shape into a cigarette and then evaporate to smoke.
“My mother and I (two restless humans) are both present in the song: ‘I was singing in my room, she smoked on the balcony / Long inhales and long exhales performed in choreography.’ If about anything, ‘To be a rose’ is about how one thing becomes another thing, how we all come from somewhere and someone, and how this is stranger and more powerful than we think.”
4AD will release Iris Silver Mist on May 2, 2025.
