Ostensibly, Jesca Hoop’s music is categorised as folk. How to square this with “Big Storm,” the fourth track from the singer-songwriter’s seventh album, Long Wave Home? The percussion sounds like – but, it turns out, actually isn’t – a drum machine. Hoop’s voice is close-miked, intimate. The choruses are gospel-esque. Brass instruments stab. Overall, there’s a country music lilt. Just before it abruptly stops, Hoop says “OK.” Odd, and folk-adjacent rather than folk, but it coheres – and makes sense.
After this, “Love is Salvation.” Here, notwithstanding the jazzy arrangement, a kinship with The Roches can be detected. But Maggie, Suzzy and Terry never sang anything quite like “take the hammer, take the knife, take the shards of broken mirror out of your sight, did they write you, did they call, if they left you high and dry I say fuck them all.”
Clearly, just-under 20 years on from her first solo album, the California born and mostly UK resident Hoop is following her own path. One which can be itinerant. Long Wave Home was recorded in four different English studios while she travelled in a camper van. This is her first self-produced album. Beyond Hoop, players include musical polymath Sam Amidon, percussionist Sebastian Rochford and double bassist Jon Thorne. Amongst topics addressed are getting to grips with the effect of the past on the present (reflected by the album’s cover image), the sudden withdrawal of friendships and, very specifically, the destruction of Gaza. Consequential chaos is the unifying thematic element.
In contrast, the resultant album is not chaotic. However it was completed, whatever its multiple inspirations, a singular – though diversely expressed – clarity of vision is at play. Each song is different from the other, and each is framed in a different way: from “Viv Over Drink’s” Salvation Army band dynamics (evoking Iceland's mũm) to “Caravan’s” (relatively) straightforward amalgamation of finger-picked guitar, cut-glass voice and round-style fiddle. Long Wave Home is multi-faceted, just like experiencing a road trip.
