|
Event
Jesca Hoop
JESCA HOOP
NEW ALBUM STONECHILD
An album made for and from these times. **** Q Magazine
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 on July 5th by Memphis Industries, STONECHILD is Hoop refined and defined. Beautiful, subtle and stark, her fifth album, the follow up to 2017s 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). Parishs 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 Hoops 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. Ive never been so brutally edited, and I wasnt 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 treatmentbeing stripped back to the bare basicsalbeit 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.
Embedded in Hoops song writing is an inherent unpredictability something she ascribes to being guided more from instinct than study. Perhaps more than ever before, STONECHILD sees Hoop lead us through uncharted landscapes across the course of the album. When I look at the history of my life, I realise I have the breakdown of not only my parents marriage but also the breakdown of their parenting to thank for the wild and unexpected course that my life would take. I went looking for a raw and rugged world. the opposite of what I was raised in.
The album title was settled after a trip to a Philadelphias Mütter Museum, where the STONECHILD is a sad, compelling display of an unborn foetus carried by a woman for over 30 years. They become a hard ball of bones, a rock. Phonetically, it's a beautiful sounding word - hard and soft but also, I am taken by the idea of carrying something for a long time, perhaps in secret and then giving it up. I hope I have made an album of substance. There is meat on the bone.
There certainly is; the breath-taking Shoulder Charge, with Lucius contributing backing vocals, speaks of stigmatized culture and the kind of isolation that is formed by shame in a world where were we are actually and truly the same even in our differences. To understand all is to forgive all.
Old Fear of Father tackles an exhausted patriarchy and misogyny but in this case as it is perpetuated by females. I love my boys, more than I love my girl, try not to show it, shes knows, like I knew. Its bare yet dense arrangement reveals a story that is both heart-breaking and shamefully true.
On Red White and Black, Hoop chants down white supremacy. Now the iron cloth thats cut from the loom bares the black and white stripe of a cotton field rolling- And the dark mines and flame of redeemers put them right back in the iron cloth and the flag is waving. As Hoop says current politics is fucking disturbing. I write from personal perspective, about relationships mostly and I dont find much music in politics, but as hate crimes increase, womens rights are being rolled back, and the two nations I call home are building walls well, the political has become deeply personal.
The folkiest moment on the album, the Kate Stables featuring Outside of Eden, concerns those young ones whose development is now guided by technology and the increasingly intimate relationship between child and device. Come shut in boys for the girlfriend experience, enter the code and Ill taste real.
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 Hoops 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.
Hoop spends the summer playing festivals in the US and Europe before embarking on an extensive UK and European tour in October.
STONECHILD is available to pre-order now on limited edition black and white marble vinyl in the official Jesca Hoop store plus indie stores. Go here for all your pre-ordering options.
Theres also a super limited STONECHILD Dinked Edition on black and white marble vinyl with a mirror board sleeve which also comes with a hand drawn and signed lyric scrawl plus a flexidisc featuring an exclusive track Waking Andreas. Go here to check out which indie stores will be stocking the Dinked version.
|
|
 |
LocationPrincess Pavilion & Gyllyngdune Gardens (View)
41 Melvill Rd
Falmouth TR11 4AR
United Kingdom
Categories
Contact
|
