Jenny Hval @ Summerhall, Edinburgh, 18 Aug

Jenny Hval has often treated live shows as something akin to performance art, as seen last time she visited Summerhall, but with this tour it feels like the music is able to speak for itself. There are wonderfully apt visuals to go along with each song, mostly switching between Windows 98-style pointed edges and hyperreal dreamscapes, but the focus is firmly on the music, which is across-the-board fantastic.

Starting at the end, Hval and her band begin with the final song from March's Classic Objects, The Revolution Will Not Be Owned – the most bombastic of the whole night. It's a weird way to start, as Hval admits after the song, but it sets the pace for the show as these songs are all full-blooded affairs incorporating the five-piece band to great effect.

American Coffee is Hval at her melodic best, with the switch-down registers a couple of minutes in heralding the catchiest song of her career, even without a chorus. Hval's voice is a joy all night, hitting high notes with an impeccable ease, enunciating even her most inscrutable lyrics with a debonair confidence that's hard to believe when compared to some of her more anxiety-ridden/inducing early work.

Image: Jenny Hval @ Summerhall, Edinburgh, 18 Aug by Kat Gollock

Ashes to Ashes comes late on and allows the bongos to come in full flow, followed by Classic Objects opener Year of Love, ending the main set appropriately backwards. The sense of freedom and release is reinforced by the surreal video of hot air balloons and acid-tripping high heel sweets. It's a casually dancey finale to a superlative performance, a little short at just an hour, but otherwise flawless.

A new song makes up the encore, one about Hval's new dog (Cleo, as seen in a cute video earlier in the night) and their relationship in the early days of the pandemic. It's a wistful, low-key affair, but suddenly erupts into a unexpectedly epic breakdown to close the night with a bang.