What does Jesca Hoop sound like?

Angular, indie folk.

The review of ‘Long Wave Home’ by Jesca Hoop

“Whose gonna be there?” sings Jesca Hoop on the opening track of her new album ‘Long Wave Home’. Her first time in the producer’s chair, Jesca found herself in a transitional year, too. Relationships changed, people left her life, and a general sense of disconnection entered in its place. Wrestling with the idea of finding a new inner perspective and exploring how outside influences can lead to that feeling of disconnect, the album was born.

Jesca Hoop says the album was a literal and artistic road trip, as she travelled the UK in a camper van, enlisting collaborators. We kick off with the plucky folk track ‘Adam’. It’s familiar ground initially, with Jesca’s trusty banjo and guitar ready to pounce with surprise shouty moments of clarity or emotion. The sound palette expands to include plucked and bowed strings, piano, and harp, as we’re eased in gently. An expanded sound is the subtle undercurrent across the album. ‘Now The Ash’ is full of muted fret noises and tuned percussion, creating a playful and jaunty frame for the rest of the music to swell. In floats rich brass and backing vocals over brushed drums, sounding very Katie Stables. None of these instruments takes centre stage, but they all add smaller riffs that allude to a larger whole.

Lead single ‘Designer Citizen’ is another volume in Jesca Hoop’s political pantheon. It lives in the clumsy verses, nodding towards a broken, slightly farcical world we’re in. It also lives in the naivety of the chorus’s innocent delivery. Angular, awkward, and with moments of militant call and response, it’s a great track. “What we doing? Changing the world!” Indeed. Jesca then delivers her Lisa Germano track. Dusty drums, a desert guitar twang, and half the song sounds like it’s coming through a broken radio speaker. It has a sultry, foreboding groove to it, and the cinematography only grows as brass, tuned percussion, and raised voices grow into a rapture. It’s an outback escape song to claim freedom ahead of turmoil.

“Did they leave you high and dry? Then I say fuck them all…” ends the chorus of ‘Love Is Salvation’. This plucky ballad is a beautiful mesh of different fretted instruments, brass, bass, piano, and layered vocals that waltzes into euphoria. It’s fascinating how two simple chords can be expanded upon to create such a whirlpool of sounds, but it is two chords all the way through. It comes back to the earlier observation that lots of little things create a massive whole. That doesn’t stop Jesca Hoop from stripping things right back, though. ‘Caravan’ is an emotional track that spends most of its time with just guitar and voice, before distant strings and brass like a slowed, old country jig. The fiddles underscore Jesca’s high register as she sings of the damage done by surrendering yourself completely to a loved one. It is an album standout.

‘Playground’ is a protest song advocating for the children in Gaza. This is another album highlight, as the fiddles move from distant sirens to raw, electric screams of pain and tension, and galloping hand percussion propels the track forward. The lyrics are pitch perfect, too:

“If rubble is playground
Then whеre does the trauma go
From sharp rock into soft feet
Then what use could hatred be…

Are playgrounds for children
In them arises humanity
And so morality
To recognize a brutalizer
If rubble is playground
If rubble is playground
In all that their new eyes see
What kind of man becomes us”

Yes, Jesca. A thousand percent yes.

‘Signal To Noise’ has Hoop turn her attention to the media and how it can be manipulated. Again, the lyrics are sublime. “If revolution can be sparked by a feeling, turn up the system, point the finger, send them reeling.” As the rustic synths, cowbells, and banjos jangle around, the song itself moves from clear folk rock into flooded landscapes of ambient drones. It risks being too literal, but it also sounds great. ‘Viv Over Drink’ is a dark, lamenting song about a friendship that seems to be disintegrating and zoning out. The downward cascade of the chords, notes, and vocals commits to a sinking feeling throughout its runtime. It’s like the song itself is trying to slip out the back door unnoticed.

With the strains of lovers, friends, family, community, and country all under the microscope, we arrive at the closing track, ‘Long Wave Home’. The waves Jesca sings of are soundwaves. This soft, dreamy lullaby is Hoop at her most experimental at times, with lush brass and backing vocal segments over muted drums. The album doesn’t offer a resolution to all the problems in the world. Instead, it offers a comfort blanket to cope with it all. People can still have dreams and ambitions, and if we return to what we know on the inside, sometimes that can save us.

‘Long Wave Home’ is an album that will grow over time. There are few immediate hooks or in-your-face moments that will make it stand out on first listen. Instead, Jesca Hoop has crafted an album that will cultivate a longer-term appreciation for nuanced songwriting, clever production, and impactful lyrics that will mean more to you five years from now than your standard folk pop. Lyrically, this is Hoop at her finest. Sonically, she’s at her widest. Give it time, and you’ll treasure your Long Wave Home, too.

Recommended track: Playground

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