Lost Girls – Selvutsletter LP Smalltown Supersound

Selvutsletter marks the first new Lost Girls album since their acclaimed debut 2021 album, Menneskekollektivet, which was named one of the year’s best releases by Pitchfork, The FADER, Brooklyn Vegan, Paste, FLOOD, and more.

Where Menneskekollektivet was about exploring club beats and expanding and trying out structures, Selvutsletter is about disappearing in experiences. It combines the intuitive, late night feel of Lost Girls’ previous work with experimental rock music as its object. Like its predecessor, the album title is a made up Norwegian word, a word that almost exists. The band’s own translation of Selvutsletter is “self-effacer: Someone who tries to erase themselves. Someone who is cleaning out themselves. Performing exorcism. Or perhaps just getting older, less interested in their own present self.”

Following the hypnotic lead single “Ruins” — “a clanging and lovely piece of kinetic post-punk” (Exclaim!) — “With the Other Hand” surges with propulsive beats and shimmering guitars guided by Hval’s soaring vocals. Inspired by Leonard Cohen, “With the Other Hand” began with a guitar line written by Volden that was passed along to Hval who began rearranging the chords beyond recognition. “The result was a structure of verse and chorus, a pop song whispering about someone’s mysterious journey through a street, a building, and a stage,” the band says. “The chorus goes like this: ‘With the other hand I open rooms / With the first one I write,’ describing two parts of something – a creative process, or two parts of the unconscious. Or perhaps the two hands describe Lost Girls themselves. One opens rooms, the other writes.”