Jesca Hoop wants you to trust in life’s path

Jesca Hoop has long flown the flag of indie-folk-pop, but as you’d expect from the visionary herself, Long Wave Home is filled with entire galaxies, ecosystems, and lifetimes of flourishes and tiny little details in the arrangements, ensuring that this project is one you could spin a million times and have something entirely unique blossom in your ears on every play. 

Speaking to me live from a sunshine-lit room filled with vinyl, Hoop tells me a key factor around the release of this album is that she’s acting in the conductor’s seat, steering the production of the album. “I’ve been preparing the world for the release of Long Wave Home,” she says. “It’s an independent release, so there is a lot of admin work and I’ve been getting ready for the tour and then you have all those logistics that go into releasing a record into the world.” Acting in the producer role, Hoop inevitably takes on a lot more of the responsibility and it almost appears to be like putting pieces of a puzzle together before you reach a complete album. 

“It’s all about making sure you have the right person for the right job,” she says, “and I kind of made this album a bit more complicated by traveling to different studios.” The producing process can stretch you in multiple directions, nevermind up and down motorways and across the sea. “I decided to book studios on the Isle of Wight, London, Manchester, and Bristol,” Hoop elaborates. It’s not a drag, though, she explains, as she begins to open up about the pros of this approach.

“The exciting stuff is figuring out exactly what kind of producer you want to be. It’s the first time I have produced a full almost 40-minute album, putting the whole album together. It becomes a question of how you facilitate the sessions, how you make people feel comfortable and draw out their best.” The way Hoop describes producing is almost like science or alchemy: you picture different elements coming together and fusing in harmony. “Some producers have an exact idea of how they want something to sound, whereas for me I have an idea of how I want it to feel, or look like. I would use a lot of metaphors for landscapes, textures, and flavours, drawing on the crossing of their senses for them to locate what to play… when I feel like they were relating to the song most clearly, or finding its pulse or heartbeat, only then I knew we were on the right track.” 

I was curious if the different cities and environments the album was created in managed to have their own transformative effect, but Hoop, clearly feeling deep in her creative senses, pauses for a moment and articulates it as: “I wouldn’t say of the actual city itself, but of those particular people involved in the process. I think about the way each recording engineer imprints the sound of something by their recording technique.” 

Long Wave Home was most definitely a collaborative approach, enlisting the assistance of engineers Tim Thomas and Liam Abrams. She explains, “The guitar tones were a collaboration between myself and Thomas. I learnt to draw out this particular tone from these hollowbody guitars I love to play, and then Abrams has such a particular aesthetic in his approach to capturing sound. There is a velveteen quality to it, and a deep saturation that is very unique to Leo – very rich and sumptuous drum tones.”

With the influence of so many characters and musicians imprinting their signature touch, the end result is an album that sounds organically chameleon-esque, as every track feels entirely singular, a ten-track collection that is unrestricted and a testament to letting yourself feel completely free. “Designer Citizen” has a twee sparkle and a lovely shout-and-call energy, whereas “Caravan” feels melodic, wistful, and longing. “I’ve always insisted that people tolerate that of me,” she says of her love of playful genre bending. “This album feels closer to my first project, in the way that it draws on different genres, but really I’m just following a song, how it carves itself out and then dressing it in a way that gets the most out of the track.” But perhaps most importantly for the songwriter, it is the motivation to avoid being pigeonholed that spurs her on. “I recognise it would be easier for me, or even the listeners, to make a samey record, or to be a folk artist. But it is never something I have been able to do.”

For a record with so many moving parts and intricacies, it might be hard for Hoop to pinpoint a particular highlight, but she does give it her best shot. “I would say ‘Playground’ was one of the most satisfying parts, because rather unusually it came out in just two days – usually it takes a whole month of writing for me. I put Sam Adimon on the fiddle and I just felt like pure evil was screaming out of him.”

Speaking of evil, Hoop has never been one to shy away from singing about difficult topics, often casting a light on some of the most timely humanitarian disasters. Sometimes it can be difficult to know the role of songwriters in times of crisis, and Hoop echoes that thought as she discusses the track “Playground”. “It’s confusing to know what to do, but it is one thing I know I can do. I feel like songwriters have a responsibility to record what is happening. Everyone should journal it from their point of view – that is the truth of what is happening – so I very truthfully decided to write about the genocide in Gaza, amongst the Palestinian people.” 

Long Wave Home  is a window into the sanctum of Hoop’s mind, the versatility to cast a light on challenging issues intersecting with the ongoings of Hoop’s personal life, almost like thoughts on the page of a journal. “It’s a personal standpoint. I’m evaluating my relationships and making decisions about what relationships are ready for a new chapter, either with or without me.”

When all is said and done, and Long Wave Home is capturing the hearts, minds, and ears of the world, Hoop just wants to raise a toast to everybody who has helped the album come to life. On stepping into newfound independence, she says, “It was important to me to envisage music on my own, communicating and speaking that language. I didn’t want it to be gatekept by other people, and I wanted to be able to walk and hold those keys myself.”

Approaching the creation of Long Wave Home in this way – influenced by the past but pushing forward at the same time – Hoop relishes the producer role, and by steering the ship, this daring and transformative new album will have you falling in love with the songwriter all over again, just like it is the first time.