Iris Silver Mist, the new album by Norwegian musician, writer, and artist Jenny Hval, is not named after a song but a fragrance. The perfume by the same name was made by the nose Maurice Roucel for the French perfume house Serge Lutens, and is described as smelling more like steel than silver. It is cold and prickly, soft and shimmering, like stepping outside on an early, misty morning, your body still warm from sleep. For Jenny, Iris Silver Mist smells like being close to ghosts. “A flower that is a root that has died, been resurrected and finely grated.” In other words, the album didn’t begin with music but with the absence of it.

During the pandemic, as concerts were cancelled, the physical presence of music disappeared alongside the bodies that listened to it. The smell of cigarettes, soap, and the sweat from warm stage lights and shared bathrooms was replaced by unphysical, algorithmic listening at home. Suddenly, and for the first time since she was a teenager, Jenny found herself growing interested in perfumes. Smelling, reading, collecting, writing—she immersed herself with the scented while her music was put on hold. It took her a year to understand what was happening, until she did: she was seeking another way of sensing physical intimacy. Where music had turned into a void, she filled it with fragrance