This Friday Jenny Hval will return with Iris Silver Mist, her new album that's inspired by scent. So far we've heard singles like "To Be A Rose" and "The Artist Is Absent," and today she's sharing "Lay Down."
"Lay Down" begins where irises and roses do: In the ground. It serves as a fitting album opener, singing over gentle synths before a subtly-triumphant drum beat kicks in: "I was hoping I was a child but perhaps I am a guide/ Writing to set you free, a guardian of the in-between." Hval explains further in a press release:
We enter the album through lying down in our own grave, under the earth, just like the root, which is the part of the iris that has a scent. It would be the very best time and place to listen to music, wouldn’t it? The fetus can smell and taste their mother’s food as well as hear voices outside the mother’s body in the final months of a pregnancy. Can a ghost in the coffin still hear the birds singing above?
Listen to "Lay Down" below.
Iris Silver Mist is out 5/2 on 4AD.
