“With the Other Hand,” the latest single from Lost Girls’ upcoming album Selvutsletter, begins like a guided meditation. In her reassuringly icy monotone, Jenny Hval directs the listener through the streets, into a bar, and onto the stage as Håvard Volden deepens the feeling of hypnosis with a dramatic guitar riff reminiscent of Leonard Cohen at his most mysterious. As Hval instructs us to concentrate on an unfamiliar light and sound, the duo reveals their sleight of hand, as earth-shattering hand-claps transform the song from a slow-burn into an oddly-affecting dance track. Volden wrote the guitar line but it’s Hval’s rearrangement, reconfigured as though through a game of exquisite corpse; the titles of both the song and album (“Self-Effacer” in Norwegian) allude to a strategic lack of ego that has served the group well. “With the other hand I open rooms” Hval belts over the beat “with the first one I write,” relishing in the free-flowing creativity of collaboration.
