Hval’s new album, Classic Objects, is her first on 4AD.

Classic Objects is a map of places: past places, like the old empty Melbourne pubs Hval’s band used to play in; public places Hval missed throughout lockdown; imagined, future places, and impossible places where dreams, hallucinations, death and art can take you. It is interested in combining heavenly things and plain things.

Classic Objects is Hval’s version of a pop album. Every song has a verse and a chorus. There are interchangeable moments of complexity, interesting melodies throughout, and a feeling of elevation and clarity in the choruses. Heba Kadry mixed it to sound as though it’s played through “a stereo in a mysterious room.”

1. Year of Love
2. American Coffee
3. Classic Objects
4. Cemetery of Splendour
5. Year of Sky
6. Jupiter
7. Freedom
8. The Revolution Will Not Be Owned