ALBUM BY ALBUM

Jesca Hoop

The singular singer-songwriter recounts the twists and turns that have taken her from Sonoma County to the Isle Of Wight

WHEN Jesca Hoop first relocated from California to the Manchester suburb of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 18 years ago, it was something of a culture shock. “I was like, ‘Where is all the deliciousness?’” she laughs. Thankfully, Hoop has long made her peace with slate-grey skies and gravy on everything.

For years, she returned to LA to make her albums with early mentor Tony Berg, and then with his protégé, Blake Mills. But more recent efforts have been fashioned here in the UK, primarily with British musicians. Her new album, Long Wave Home, is her first self-production, created in four different studios around the country, with Hoop driving between them in her camper van. “It’s a pretty serious bootstraps moment,” she admits. “It came with its challenges, for sure.” Not least when she almost lost her favourite guitar on the Isle Of Wight ferry. “But the reason I chose to produce it myself is because I wanted to grow. I needed to grow.”

Throughout Hoop’s restless transatlantic musical quest, there’s one particular piece of advice that has served her well. Famously, one of her jobs before entering the music industry was looking after the children of Kathleen Brennan and Tom Waits. “He’s the one who told me that when you’re singing, you find the feeling of what it is you’re trying to say, and then you sing from that place. And I’ve employed that ever since.”

SAM RICHARDS

Hoop in 2007: sowing seeds alongside “people with a vision”

FRANK OCKENFELS III

KISMET

3ENTERTAINMENT/RED INK/ COLUMBIA, 2007

Accessing a major-label budget for the first and only time, Hoop debuts with an audacious mix of folk, old-time jazz and contemporary R&B

I released my first record when I was 32, because I couldn’t justify putting myself in the centre of the room and calling attention to myself. I had always been writing music, I had a whole body of material, I was a singer since I was a child. But for me to start, I had to move past the feeling of, “Why do I want to do this?”

So I decided to get over that hump and I started a band in Sonoma County, called Majesty’s Monkey. We were weird to an embarrassing degree. You know how CocoRosie is weird? We were weirder. I was working, helping people in their home and looking after kids and living a quite mundane life. I was very clearly needing a challenge, so I decided to take music on in earnest, and launch myself out of Sonoma County into the world.