Jenny Hval‘s latest solo album The Practice of Love will be released on Friday through her longtime label Sacred Bones, and in the buildup to the release, she’s unveiled another new single. “Accident” follows two earlier tracks—“Ashes To Ashes” and “High Alice“—and arrives with a new music video, the first pegged to this album release.
Directed by Zia Anger, the video opens with an old woman (played by Zia’s mother Barbara Anger) typing a letter addressed to Hval before cutting away to chilling shots of a cave and empty bathroom with the water running. The woman acts out scenes described in Hval’s lyrics, which narrate the process of giving birth and decision to become a mother. “I was just an accident,” Hval sings in the haunting hook as the actress signs pantomimes. Shots of Anger’s mother submerged underwater are interspersed with footage of undersea jellyfish, as the video makes the fairly natural phenomenon of reproduction into something eerie and unsettling.
“It’s a given that the product of some artistic work is worthless,” Hval shared in a joint statement with Zia Anger. “You are therefore expected to ‘mother’ it instead of working and being compensated for it. And sometimes this is the best kind of work. Because it doesn’t feel valuable. Because not everybody will like it, or understand it. Because it won’t immediately be sucked up into the capitalist scroll. It has time and space to be conceived of, to sit in utero, to be birthed, to have its umbilical cord cut, and to live, to breathe.”
Following the release of her new album, Hval is heading out on tour with dates throughout Europe in the coming months. After performing in Oslo and London later this month, she’ll be coming through Frankfurt and Paris in October, with two festival dates to follow at the Netherlands’ Le Guess Who? Festival and Poland’s Are Cameralis Festival in November.
Watch Hval’s new video for “Accident” below and preorder her new album The Practice of Love here.
Jenny Hval Tour Dates:
09/20-21 – Oslo, NO @ Ultima Festival
09/29 – London, UK @ Milton Court
10/16 – Frankfurt, DE @ Mousonturm
10/30 – Paris, FR @ Centre Pompidou
11/09 – Utrecht, NL @ Le Guess Who? Festival
11/23 – Katowice, PL @ Ars Cameralis Festival
