Iris Silver Mist - Jenny Hval: Review

Review by Lavender: 

Jenny Hval is a Norwegian singer-songwriter whose career stretches back more than 15 years and is packed full of poetic, gentle, introspective, and often lightly conceptual projects. While she's had her hand in several side projects and collaborations, her best work comes in her core series of solo albums, which goes pretty much without a miss in the bunch. Listing the highlights would basically involve me telling you about each of the 5 projects she dropped between 2013 and 2022, all of which are absolutely worth checking out. 

With a pedigree like that, there was no reason to go into Iris Silver Mist expecting anything but continued excellence, and that's what I got with the brilliant lead single "To be a rose." It was announced alongside the reveal that the album would be smell-themed and even pulls its title from a perfume. That obviously shows up on "Rose" where Jenny begins to unpack how specific smells can evoke such vivid nostalgia on the indulgent verses. Despite that indulgence, the song soars into a beautiful chorus that's so catchy and memorable in a way that just dazzles me. 

Though the smell element of the record certainly is important, "To be a rose" also introduces this theme of attempting to understand performance. Throughout Iris Silver Mist Jenny indulges in a question of what makes something a performance by a performer. That interrogation is at its clearest on "I don't know what free is" which interrogates this concept and causes Jenny to reframe the question, referring to as a more nebulous "she" in an attempt to understand why she performs. I love the way the song introduces itself in the second half with new punchy drums and fluttering synths that give way to some of the catchiest refrains on the record. This thread mostly comes to a close on "A ballad" where suddenly Jenny asks the question of herself with the same poetic abstraction she's always been so good at conjuring. 

The album opens with "Lay Down," a gentle and immediately rewarding start that touches on mother/daughter relationships filtered through Jenny's ever-present vagueness. The song is also sonically lush with a subtle array of synths and a stable drum beat that serves as a perfect platform. I'm slightly less impressed by the instrumental on "You Died," which is similarly beautiful but starts to feel a bit static as the song goes on. I'm much more compelled by the lyrics, which I think tell the story of a pet that nearly passes away and Jenny's reaction to that event. "I want the end to sound like this" is a fittingly titled instrumental closer that guides the album ever so gently to its conclusion. 

Jenny has always had a darker and more methodical side to her music, though over time it's seemed to become less and less a part of her sound. The album's second single, "The artist is absent," explored that, though just for 80 seconds. A bulkier exploration is found in the deep cuts. "All night long" begins with lively drums and Jenny singing about responding to questions from a recording software. The track asks you to conjure your own memories framed through Jenny's experience, which I think is pretty compelling framing. The second half of the song features a much gentler stretch that eventually gives way to a spoken word section. When the full array of instrumentation reintroduces itself at the end, it's a rousing, excellent moment. Similarly, "The gift" queries from some of Jenny's music earlier in her career with a glitchy rumbling instrumental leaning into her more confrontational side. That combines with her whispered vocals, leaves her feeling as confident as ever. 

Iris Silver Mist is another great release from Jenny Hval. It once again sees her leaning into personal vulnerability, though the ways she projects it onto their audience and subversively poses questions for listeners to ask themselves clicked with me more than ever before. Combine that with an instrumental palette that increases both her range and ambition from her last album, and you've got one of the most subtle and introspective singer-songwriter albums of 2025. 8/10

For more singer-songwriter music, check out ktessa's guest review of Lucy Dacus' Forever Is A Feeling