Innocence is Kinky

She is expressing something ineffable in a way that is consumable and still interesting: the album as starting point, a work that grows with the listener--the gateway drug to thinking differently.

Only rarely is one privileged to be carried away by a record so beautifully absorbed with its own vision.

Innocence is Kinky is by turns surreal and hyper-real, a Lynch-ian underworld of avant-pop, alt-lit poetry and potent sexuality.

This mind-expanding record will inspire a more inexpressible connection: you will carve your own niche within its deep and absorbing textures, and you will find new things upon every listen.

Ultimately, the album’s heady diversity originates in Hval’s malleable voice, which alters style, approach, timber, and tone from one measure to the next.

Innocence is Kinky might be a more clear distillation of Hval’s vision, but that’s only because the gaze is fixed so intently from performer to perpetrator.

Disturbingly sensual stuff. [Jun 2013, p.99]

It may be difficult to listen to, and even harder to stomach, but there is great reward in focusing on what happens in this deceptively hushed landscape that Hval has built, because for all its use of soft atmospherics and gentle, eiderdown-laced vocals, the album ultimately betrays the implication of a lifetime of misuse beneath its soothing dulcet tones and restrained palettes.

Innocence Is Kinky is a remarkable album, one which delves beneath the surface and returns with something both seductive and strange.

Self-reflective and conceptually probing, it demands and sustains repeated listenings. [May 2013, p.55]