Norwegian duo Lost Girls’s Selvutsletter doesn’t quite manage the same wonders as their 2021 debut, Menneskekollektivet, but it’s another flight of fancy that dazzles in its defiance of expectations. This is due in large part to the way singer Jenny Hval uses her piercing voice to both entrance and provoke. When she sings the title of the opening track, “Timed Intervals,” she holds the last note until her voice breaks. Later, on “June 1996,” she trills a note with almost anarchic abandon, bending it up and down the scale with a playful randomness.
These choices convey the kind of unpredictability that Hval supplies throughout Selvutsletter. She sings much more here than she did on Menneskekollektivet, where her vocal contributions were largely spoken. At times, one misses the contrast that her stream-of-conscious lyrics struck with multi-instrumentalist Håvard Volden’s propulsive electronic beats.
Two of the five songs on Menneskekollektivet hover around the 15-minute mark, and that album was driven by an interest in letting tensions and momentum slowly creep up as Volden added more layers of instrumentation. Many of Selvutsletter’s songs are less than five minutes and waste no time establishing their driving drum beats and melodies. Sometimes this leaves the listener wanting: The drums on tracks like “With the Other Hand” and “Ruins” have a crude, compressed quality that, when used as the omnipresent foundation of a song, can sound ugly.
There’s less friction and excitability on Selvutsletter, though the album isn’t exactly subdued. Hval and Volden feel most at home on the seven-minute “Jeg slutter meg selv,” a Lindstrøm-esque space-disco number. The track opens with the sound of exhaling followed by what could be an antiquated control board powering on. About midway through, a pulsing kickdrum and a slurred guitar tone kick in and sonic elements gradually accumulate until they bear an almost unexpected weight.
Attempts to deemphasize the electronic elements and tighten up the songwriting do pay off though. The album’s moody opening songs—“Timed Intervals,” “With the Other Hand,” and “Ruins”—are characterized by a certain longing. Volden’s guitar effectively conjures disparate atmospheres—spacious on “With the Other Hand” and crunchy on “Ruins”—and the rattling percussion on “Timed Intervals” rhymes nicely with Hval’s incantatory observation: “As if the world doesn’t want us bumping into each other…at timed intervals.”
But while Hval and Volden admirably try some news things on Selvutsletter, experimental pop in this vein demands that the various parts congeal a little more. Songs like “Re-entering” and “World on Fire” in particular feel like nothing more than wandering sketches. Still, Hval and Volden’s modus operandi has been to push barriers, regularly tickling some pleasure point you didn’t know you needed, while perhaps neglecting the one you thought you did.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
