Selvutsletter by Lost Girls

“On Selvutsletter, Hval slips into rabbit hole after rabbit hole, and all we can do is follow her down.” Pitchfork

"With their second LP as Lost Girls, Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden somehow distill the magic of their long-form excursions into indelible, avant-pop nuggets." The Quietus

"Selvutsletter is a record to sit with, to get lost in. The world looks a little different when you emerge." Loud and Quiet

Selvutsletter marks the first new Lost Girls album since their acclaimed debut 2021 album, Menneskekollektivet, which was named one of the year’s best releases by Pitchfork, The FADER, Brooklyn Vegan, Paste, FLOOD, and more.

Where Menneskekollektivet was about exploring club beats and expanding and trying out structures, Selvutsletter is about disappearing in experiences. It combines the intuitive, late night feel of Lost Girls’ previous work with experimental rock music as its object. Like its predecessor, the album title is a made up Norwegian word, a word that almost exists. The band’s own translation of Selvutsletter is “self-effacer: Someone who tries to erase themselves. Someone who is cleaning out themselves. Performing exorcism. Or perhaps just getting older, less interested in their own present self.”

Following the hypnotic lead single “Ruins” — “a clanging and lovely piece of kinetic post-punk” (Exclaim!) — “With the Other Hand” surges with propulsive beats and shimmering guitars guided by Hval’s soaring vocals. Inspired by Leonard Cohen, “With the Other Hand” began with a guitar line written by Volden that was passed along to Hval who began rearranging the chords beyond recognition. “The result was a structure of verse and chorus, a pop song whispering about someone’s mysterious journey through a street, a building, and a stage,” the band says. “The chorus goes like this: ‘With the other hand I open rooms / With the first one I write,’ describing two parts of something - a creative process, or two parts of the unconscious. Or perhaps the two hands describe Lost Girls themselves. One opens rooms, the other writes.”

Lost Girls’ collaboration dates back more than a decade, with Volden playing regularly in Hval’s live band, as well as the duo’s acoustic collaborative album from 2012 (under the moniker Nude on Sand). In 2022, the duo were booked to perform a concert at Les Subsistances in Lyon, and they decided to use the opportunity to create all new material. Working in tandem, with Volden creating beats and wild sets of guitar chords and Hval restructuring the parts, creating melodies and word, and adding more sounds, they started spiraling into unchartered territory of shorter, more concise and melodic songs.

As the material for Selvutsletter developed, words already embedded in the chords, guitar sounds and rhythms began to dance around. Lyrics soon began to take shape, their subjects spanning cities after dark, music rituals, band practices of the ‘90s, and the early days of the internet. These were Hval's own memories of her hometown and her obsession with creating music as a way of leaving it behind or even setting it on fire. Selvutsletter is, in that sense, about retracing Hval and Volden's steps back to how it felt to discover music, the intensely physical and communal experience of creating something.

Photo: Lasse Marhaug