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JESCA HOOP

Jesca Hoop

Long Wave Home

Staying true to her folk roots, though never purely, Jesca Hoop delivers strikingly original songwriting showcasing her innovative vocals augmented by imaginative arrangements. 'Long Wave Home' is energized and rings with the promise of a fresh new chapter for the artist. 

“When I was faced with the challenge of writing and recording a new album, I had the choice to stay where I was comfortable, under the sage guidance of a producer or to step out into the dark and produce it myself. It became clear that if I was going to grow in the craft, I needed to become my own lighthouse. So I made the commitment to take on the Producer role. There were a lot of sleepless nights.

"Writing 'Long Wave Home', though no less daunting, became a refuge for me—a place to explore interpersonal connections and the rise and fall of emotions that come with relationships. Writing an album can be very agitating, but it’s a discomfort I am comfortable with. What a gift it is to spend my time examining my inner world, my relationships, and from it make music.

"My life took an unexpected turn in 2025. Many people exited my life... like a bus pulling into the station. Some of these relationships were of great importance, so I had much to wrestle with in these verses. Disconnect, or the illusion thereof, was also fodder for songs—amid the chaos and confusion we are creating in this world, I feel a responsibility to record what I see transpiring among us: what is being done... by whom and to whom.

"The song titled ‘Caravan’ articulates the risks of investing in or relying upon intimate relationships. The title track, ‘Long Wave Home’, addresses a certain estrangement that I believe we are all feeling, as technologies isolate each of us and make connections feel ever more distant. ‘Playground’ is a protest song advocating for the children of Gaza.

"Recording this album was a road trip and a forage—me and a hard drive in a camper van, pulling into studios up and down England, gathering material. I enlisted engineers Leo Abrahams (at The Shed in London); Jim and Rob Homes (at Empire Sound on the Isle of Wight); Jim Barr (at J&J Studio in Bristol); and Tim Thomas (at Blueprint in Manchester). I brought in Jesse D Vernon to arrange brass and tuned percussion. I brought in Sebastian Rochford on drums, Jon Thorne on bass, and Sam Amidon to play a cast of stringed instruments. Over three weeks, I roved my way through these sessions, gathering performances. I slept under viaducts and ancient oak trees, and I woke to dewy, glistening pastures. I found the best cafés, and I swam in the sea. The sessions felt like discoveries—surprise after surprise—as the musicians and engineers coloured the tunes, each in their own way. With a full hard drive and heart, I returned to Manchester—to Tim Thomas—where we laid out the sessions like bolts of raw material and constructed the album.

"'Long Wave Home' is not just a renewal of my commitment to the craft of writing and record-making—it’s a vote of confidence and an investment in myself as an artist and authority over my vocation and life’s path.” – Jesca Hoop

TRACK LISTING

1. Adam
2. Now The Ash
3. Designer Citizen
4. Big Storm
5. Love Is Salvation
6. Caravan
7. Playground
8. Signal To Noise
9. Viv Over Drink
10. Long Wave Home

Jesca Hoop

Selective Memory

California-born, Manchester based Jesca Hoop is what you’d call a musician’s musician. Discovered by Tom Waits and brought on tour by Peter Gabriel to sing in his band, it was a phone call from Elbow’s Guy Garvey that saw her move to the UK. Having worked with producers John Parish (PJ Harvey), Blake Mills (Alabama Shakes) Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers) her 6 albums of original work have brought huge acclaim from fans and critics alike, and it’s easy to see why: her expertly crafted songs, rooted in the folk tradition are intricately detailed, harmonic curiosities teeming with bright ideas and rich emotions.

Selective Memory is an unplugged reimagining of Jesca Hoop's fourth studio album Memories Are Now, joining the cast of stripped back album versions for her first three releases. Aligned with this tradition in it's rough and ready aesthetic, Hoop and her two band mates, Chloe Foy and Rachel Rimmer, captured the album top to tail performed live in Jesca's home in Manchester, UK. This album is filled with brilliant harmony, bountiful lyrics, and genuine performances. It is sweet and bitter, fresh, and raw, and very much of the moment.

TRACK LISTING

1. Memories Are Now
2. The Lost Sky
3. Animal Kingdom Chaotic
4. Simon Says
5. Cut Connection
6. Songs Of Old
7. Unsaid
8. Pegasi
9. The Coming

Jesca Hoop

Order Of Romance

Jesca Hoop returns with her sixth album, Order of Romance, a record that fortifies her position as one of the most striking and original voices in contemporary music. Order of Romance is Hoop's most intricate and finely balanced album to date, one that draws on classic song writing, recalling anything from Gershwin to Paul Simon, but creating something that is unmistakably, indelibly Jesca Hoop. It is a deep dive into craft. As Jesca says “I set out to mature as a writer, to further clarity my voice and stance, through melodies and phrases only I can construct. Order of Romance feels like every person, character, or artist, I ever was over the many seasons of my life was handed an instrument to play across the songs.”

In the summer of 2021, Hoop once again ventured south from her adopted home of Manchester to Bristol to team up with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding), her collaborator for 2019’s Stonechild. This time additional assistance came from in Jess Vernon (This is the Kit) to arrange for a four-piece horn and woodwind quintet. Legendary drummer Seb Rochford lent his skills, John Thorne plays the bass and Chloe Foy and Rachel Rimmer were enlisted to deliver Hoop’s signature vocal arrangements. The result is a fruitful marriage of song craft and arrangement, brimming with a cinematic charm and lyrical wit that signify a new chapter full of new life for an artist who knows her mind, her heart and voice well enough to trust them in uncharted territory.

Order of Romance then is a complete work that demands close attention, an active listen, a filagree that’s apparent lightness of touch belies a serious intent. Themes of empathy and friendship, intertwine with a clear eyed and moralistic poetry on subjects such as gun control, religious and political cults, and climate change.

Order of Romance is perhaps ultimately an exploration of the endless balance act of being a ‘Human Being’, an approach and examination of some of the biggest theme and issues of our time through the doorway of the personal, a way finding meaning and some kind of faith in a world where so much is disconnected and discordant. As she states “I seek out reflection and resolve in my songs. I find out who I am in a sense. For a few minutes, I can exist in nature at my full potential, saying just what I mean, in balance, in awe, in wonder and in full force. As a moral agent, a mode I can’t seem to avoid, my writing is time taken to observe and ask questions. I find humour in our predicament. I find danger in the reckoning. I find faith despite our sorry state and I feel connection when I draw it through my voice. I stand my ground and through the music and point inevitably towards compassion”.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Sudden Light
2. I Was Just 14
3. Hatred Has A Mother
4. One Way Mirror
5. Silent Extinction
Side B
6. 7lbs Of Pressure
7. Sioux Falls
8. Like I Am Time
9. Firestorm
10. Lyre Bird

Jesca Hoop

The Deconstruction Of Jack's House (RSD21 EDITION)

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2021 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY JULY 17TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 6PM ON THE SAME DAY (SATURDAY JULY 17TH).


Jesca Hoop has a tradition of reimagining and rerecording her own albums and having previously created beautifully stark versions of her albums Kismet and Hunting my Dress it is the turn of The House That Jack Built. Recorded in her Manchester based home-built studio in December 2020, these intimate and immediate reworkings shine the spotlight on Hoops intricate, complex song writing with her astonishing vocals front and centre The Deconstruction of Jackís House comes on limited edition white vinyl for Record Store Day 2021.

A culmination of life and musical experience, uncompromising in its vision, STONECHILD, the new studio album from Jesca Hoop is a self-described “compassion project.” 

Released by Memphis Industries, STONECHILD is Hoop refined and defined. Beautiful, subtle and stark, her fifth album, the follow up to 2017’s highly acclaimed ‘Memories Are Now’, is her best yet. 

Despite being a long-term resident of Manchester, Hoop, has until now, returned to her native California to record. This time round however, “it was” according to Hoop “time to step out of my comfort zone, my safe place”, venturing south to Bristol to team up with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding, This is the Kit). Parish’s minimal and purist approach helped clarify Hoop in her ideas and subtly yet effectively realigning her sound. The simplified arrangements draw focus to the fundamental sophistication of the songs. 

While Hoop’s trademark finger-plucked guitar and ethereal textures remain, the songs and their presentation are ever more direct. Parish “was a gentle collaborator until he killed one of my darlings” Hoop jests. “I’ve never been so brutally edited, and I wasn’t shy about expressing my discomfort at the sight of my work on the cutting room floor. He said, you will forgive me, and in some way, I think I actually enjoyed that treatment…being stripped back to the bare basics…albeit painfully”. STONECHILD ventures further into fresh territory with other voices joining the narrative, with Kate Stables (aka This is the Kit) Rozi Plain and Lucius singing the choruses and expanding the sensual depth of the sonic bloom. 

STONECHILD, Hoop says, is intended to “wrap its arms around our human planet spinning in its increasingly precarious wobble”. These rich and curious songs derived from themes of our troubled times speak Hoop’s heart and mind from her empathetic yet tough loving centre point. With writing so fluid, so natural the result is an album where everything is truly meant.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Gorgeous fingerplucked guitar brings echoes of 60's folk, alt-country and modern brooding indie, all wrapped together with Hoop's delicate, prominent vocal talents. Brilliantly textured but smoothly flowing from one idea to another. A masterclass in restraint and songwriting.

TRACK LISTING

1. Free Of The Feeling (Ft. Lucius)
2. Shoulder Charge (Ft. Lucius)
3. Old Fear Of Father
4. Footfall To The Path
5. Death Row
6. Red White And Black
7. 01 Tear
8. All Time Low
9. Outside Of Eden (Ft. Kate Stables And Justis)
10. Passage's End
11. Time Capsule


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