Brilliantly inventive, eclectic, poetic, experimental folk and art-pop by the acclaimed Manchester-based Californian singer-songwriter and guitarist in her first self-produced album, variously about the end of relationships, life changes, technology’s social effects, Gaza victims and other contemporary issues in her finest to date. Stylistically, the LP broadly shapes in two halves – the first showcases her ever original, quirkily wonderful art-pop side with a staccato guitar sound and mix of other instruments, the second a more stripped-back acoustic folk, but also equally powerful and compelling. Opener Adam suggests a relationship schism with chamber strings, harp and woodwind: “Too many too little to lates for stitching time / Half of the other / 6 of 1 what's yours and what is mine / I know you know you've taken mine. Now The Ash, also with staccato, rhythmic sound also describes a dramatic change: “Poison for sugar / Everything's drawn together / With a kiss that tears you / From the bond of another.” But the first half’s highlights are Designer Citizen, which addresses national identity with a wry, ironic, cutting humour and wordplay at the dire current state of her origin country (“Lucky me I'm American / Ringin the golden era in …”) and a superbly clever video. Big Storm has a brilliantly catchy, bluesy stomp melody and rhythm, and was written about “a moment, many years ago, when I was tempted to abandon everything—everyone I knew and everything I was doing. I gave away all my possessions, keeping only the essentials. I sold my car. I bought a plane ticket. The plan was to leave without notice. Then the biggest storm in recent history blew my getaway plan to bits. It grounded all planes and halted travel. I was forced to face my life.”
The second half highlights include Caravan, a gently finger-picked number with fiddle accompaniment, sung with fragile beauty, articulating the risks of investing in or relying upon intimate relationships for the foreboding opening lines: “One kiss on the dance floor/ And I climbed aboard your caravan / Death to my mother's warning …”, but even more powerfully, Playground, a vivid syncopated protest folk song advocating for the children of Gaza: “Where grass for the barefoot children grows / When food and roof care and protection / Are playgrounds for children / In them arises humanity / And so morality/ To recognize a brutalizer/ If rubble is playground … In all that their new eyes see/ What kind of man becomes us.” The gentle closing title track, which touches is also gorgeously vivid, poetic and profound, and aims to traverse that feeling of how technologies can isolate each of us: “Evеry sound that has happened / Or evеr could / All at once all of the time / The bell rings / The pin drops / The whispering wood / Only transfer never die.” An artist at the peak of her powers, it is no wonder that Tom Waits has described Hoop as “like a four sided coin. She is an old soul, like a black pearl, a good witch or red moon. Her music is like going swimming in a lake at night.” Exactly. And to prove this to be so, a superbly original and beautiful piece of work that’s certainly best of the year contender. Out on Last Laugh / Republic Of Music.
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