Jenny Hval - Iris Silver Mist

Iris Silver Mist, the new album by Norwegian musician and writer Jenny Hval, began not with music but with its absence. During the pandemic, as live performance faded and algorithmic listening took over, Hval found herself immersed in the world of perfume—a sensory stand-in for the physicality music had once offered.

Named after a metallic-scented fragrance by Maurice Roucel for Serge Lutens, the album explores scent as memory, metaphor, and medium. Hval draws parallels between perfume and music: both invisible yet affective, both fleeting and structured by rhythm and texture.

Lead single “To be a rose” merges roses and cigarettes into a shifting motif of transformation. Half-spoken and half-sung, it captures the album’s central tension: how bodies, memories, and meanings dissolve and reform. Iris Silver Mist is less about resolution than movement—a delicate, vaporous search for connection in the spaces between senses.