Lost Girls

As Lost Girls, Norwegian musician/writer Jenny Hval and longtime collaborator Håvard Volden lend a candid sensuality to their experiments. Melding Hval's alternately spoken and sung vocals with droning guitars and electronics, the duo's music ranges from contemplative to nervy. The duo's chemistry is just as intuitive on the extended meditations of 2018's Feeling EP and 2021's improvisatory debut album Menneskekollektivet as it is on the bursts of experimental rock on 2023's Selvutsletter. Prior to Lost Girls, multi-instrumentalist Volden -- a member of Hval's live band for over a decade -- performed in her previous band Rockettothesky. The pair also worked together as Nude on Sand, issuing a 2012 self-titled album of acoustic-based experiments. They started fresh with Lost Girls, adopting the project's name from the title of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's 2006 graphic novel. Their debut EP, March 2018's Feeling, included a staple from Hval's live show and a song Volden had been tinkering with for years before the singer's vocals provided the finishing touch. To make their first album, Lost Girls worked in Trondheim's Øra studios, where they improvised based on their initial song sketches. The exploratory Menneskekollektivet (Norwegian for "human collective") arrived in March 2021 on Smalltown Supersound. When Lost Girls prepared for a 2022 performance at Lyon, France's venue Les Subsistances, it sparked the duo to write pieces that became October 2023's Selvutsletter. Some of Hval and Volden's most concise and melodic work, the album paired fractured beats and guitars with traditional folk elements and reflections on the nature of creativity itself. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi