I can't say that I have " Band Members". I can say however that my musical collaborations are rich. I just finished my first full length record. I produced it Damian Anthony and Tony Berg. What a trip it was. Let's see who participated... Mika9, Stuart Copeland, Matt Chamberlain, Patrick Warren, Cedric, Quinn, Frank Lenz, Blake Mills, Sam Farrarre, Gabriel Garza, Jesse, And oh yes...The Yoshida Brothers. A highly creative lot if i dare say so myself. It is a totally wackadoo record. On the other hand recently I have been singin alot with the Ditty Bops and playin out with Kaveh Rastigar who plays bass with the girls. I look forward to collaborating with many more of my fellow players in the near future.
Influences
early early folk songs, pop radio, chamber music,gospel music,20's to 40's jazz, ol' counrty, ol' blues, slave songs,dance Hall, murder ballads, rock and roll, blue grass, my back yard, Cat Stevens, Kate Bush, Edith Piaff,Blackbird Stitches, Crosby Stills n Nash, Bjork, Out Cast,The Faun Fables, Beck, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, The Roots, Tom Waits, Leanord Cohen, Pj Harvey, The Police, my best friends, my phone bill, what i ate for breakfast, what i didnt eat for breakfast. Say no to fast food and junk food music.
Any music that is good...and may the lord help you if you can't tell the difference.
"We wanted to make sure that our inexperience showed," says Jesca Hoop about her entrancing debut album, Kismet. "This album was a process of discovery, and this is what that discovery sounds like. I wanted to hear something new, so I made what I think is something new – or fresh to my ears, anyway. I made the record that I wanted to hear. That was my motivation."
Indeed, Kismet is filled with continually unfolding discoveries – from the shimmering wonder of "Summertime," its lustrous opening track, to the off-kilter elegance of "Love and Love Again," which brings it to a swooning close. Each of the album’s eleven song wanders into surprising sonic places – woozy keyboards, pop riffs that turn themselves surreally inside out, lyrics that flirt with multiple meanings and refuse to settle in any one spot. The result is a shifting, dreamlike atmosphere in which everything follows an internal logic that makes perfect sense for the length of each song, and then evaporates as the next song begins to take its equally individual shape. The album is seductive, fun and entirely mesmerizing.
How it came to be is a story in itself. Hoop was raised a Mormon, but eventually left that world behind to create her own path – and her own visionary worlds. She traveled in the West – California, Wyoming, Arizona – and, finally, worked for five years as nanny to the children of Tom Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan. Hoop had already been writing songs and performing with a band, and Waits took an interest in her songs. Through him, an early version of "Seed of Wonder" made its way to Lionel Conway who in turn gave it to Nic Harcourt, the musically adventurous and influential host of "Morning Becomes Eclectic," on KCRW in Santa Monica. Harcourt began playing the song, and it became one of the most requested tracks in the station’s history.
"Nic was willing to play this weird, six-minute song that had only guitar and vocal on it on the radio," Hoop says, appreciatively. "He deserves credit for that, and I want to acknowledge him, because that's what I want to hear from deejays – for them to try something new. He did, and it's done a world of good for me." Record company interest ensued, and Hoop signed with 3 Entertainment, a partnership with Columbia Records. "From the moment I heard her demos I knew I had found a special artist," proclaims Harcourt "a unique voice, a unique songwriter, a unique record."
Hoop describes Kismet as a collaboration between herself, producer Damian Anthony, and Tony Berg, the co-founder of 3 Entertainment. An industry veteran, Berg has produced the likes of Edie Brickell, Michael Penn and Aimee Mann, and much of Kismet was recorded at his home studio, Zeitgeist. "It took a little while to fall into our dynamic," Hoop says. "Tony has his production style. Damian and I had no defined production style – we were discovering our style. We wanted to keep it young and naïve, but we also wanted to make sure that it had the smarts and savvy of someone who did have experience. Tony provided that guidance."
The trio managed to strike that balance. For all of its unpredictable turns, Kismet never runs off the rails. The fleshed-out, though no less provocative, version of "Seed of Wonder" on Kismet, for example, includes drums by Stewart Copeland, one of Hoop’s favorite drummers from her childhood. "That was a serious treat!" she says. "It’s a complicated song, because the structure is not...normal," she continues, laughing. "So he just sat down for an hour or so and did the most mad drumming I’ve ever witnessed – breaking sticks, throwing sticks. I'm a longtime fan."
Hoop's improvisational flair as a singer is one of the album's most significant unifying aspects. She delivers her vocals as if she is making up the melody on the spot. You listen just to see where she’s going to go next. It's an effect that often underscores the themes of her songs, as in "Summertime," where an abrupt key change and drop in pitch signal a move from a childlike world of innocent pleasure to a more adult realm of erotic longing.
"It takes a funny turn," Hoop says of the song. "It's like, what about the deeper side of summer, where you're that kid who wanders off and has your first sexual experience? Or even if you’re a grown woman – there’s the heat of summer and all the sexiness involved. You have the age of innocence, and also the ripening of that innocence."
"Money," meanwhile, takes a wry look at the rampant commercialism of the music industry – and the culture at large. "Money makes the world go round/Money make you change your sound, if the price is right," she sings. On another note, the haunting folk melody of "Enemy" reveals a strange beauty in the scars of love's wars – "the jewels of my story," as the singer puts it. And the mournful "Love Is All We Have" commemorates the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. "It's a way to reflect upon that wound in our country, to lend a heart to it," Hoop says. "And to let the people there know what we're thinking of them."
For all of its artistic ambition and near obsession with sound and sensual wordplay ("it burned and it burned and it burrowed in/soar through the source searching/hammer and ping"), Kismet is an album of profound emotional power. That aspect of Hoop's music is especially palpable on stage, she says. "I love that people will come and lend their imaginations to words that I’ve put on a piece of paper, and that I’m singing to them at that moment," she explains. "The songs affect me, because they come from a pretty emotional place. And if I think about it affecting the people listening, it will inevitably make me cry!" She pauses and laughs. "The people who know me best, the ones who come to every show, know that I cry a lot," she continues. "These songs are very personal. There’s just nothing like the joy of playing for people."
The word "kismet," of course, means fate. There's no doubt that many of the fans who discover Jesca Hoop with this album will come to feel that somehow they were meant to hear these deeply moving songs.
Kismet is that sort of album, and Jesca Hoop is that sort of artist.
--- Anthony DeCurtis
Press/Media
Sunday Times Online (UK)
(March 13, 2008) - The LA-based British DJ Nic Harcourt, whose Morning Becomes Eclectic show on KCRW has played a pivotal role in breaking acts such as Coldplay and Norah Jones, hosted an evening at Buffalo Billiards, kicking off at 8pm with the Californian singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop. An out-of-the-box writer and performer, Hoop is currently being courted, as they say, by a number of visiting UK label scouts. She's Tom Waits's former nanny, but her album Kismet should, when it's eventually released in Britain, mean that that fact soon ceases to be her chief claim to fame. The highlight of a strong and bracingly eccentric full-band performance was Intelligentactile 101, a Bjork-meets-Edie Brickell tub-thumper that sounds like her first hit.-Dan Cairns
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Music Week
(March 13, 2008) - Earlier in the evening Steve Lamacq, Martin Mills (Beggars) and Dan Cairns (Times Culture) were among those crammed into Buffallo Billiards for a brilliant performance by new talent Jesca Hoop. The at present unsigned artist has joined Peter Leak's management stable at Nettwerk alongside Martha Wainwright and Dido, and promises to make some serious inroads this year. In an interesting twist to her story, Hoop, who was formerly signed to Columbia, was discovered via Tom Waits with whom she was employed as a nanny for his children. - Stuart Clarke Read more...
Daily Camera.com
(March 14, 2008) My first official music of SXSW is provided by California singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop who has been much hyped by both Tom Waits (Jesca worked as a nanny for Tom) and influential DJ Nic Harcourt. Harcourt's station KCRW (Santa Monica and KCRW.com) has a highly visible presence at SXSW, including presenting this opening showcase with Jesca Hoop. Jesca's performance is theatrical - playful but not overbearing. After mostly a full band set, she closes with just voice and guitar, showcasing her sophisticated melodic leaps and flowing arms (adorned with elbow-length white gloves). Her performance is genuinely musical - a nice start to SXSW 2008. –Brian Eyster Read more...
LAist.com
You might recall that right around Labor Day we celebrated KCRW's 30th anniversary of Morning Becomes Eclectic with a series of interviews with a handful of their on-air personalities. Today we are lucky enough to get the Top 10 list of Nic Harcourt's top albums of 2007. We are very happy to see that he's just as down with local kids Sea Wolf and Great Northern as we are. Not only that, but atop his list is another local girl, Jesca Hoop! Read more...
LA Times
Maybe it's her small-town upbringing in Sonoma County, or maybe it's her singing voice -- which sounds like a cherub caught in a light breeze -- but people want to know whether moving to Los Angeles somehow threatened Jesca Hoop. Read more...
Paste Magazine
(October 2007) – 4 to Watch feature excerpt: Why She’s Worth Watching - Her debut Kismet feels like a feral child emerging from the Top 40 forest, brimming with loopy, acrobatic vocals, ethereal off-kilter melodies and lovably eccentric lyrics. Kickoff single “Summertime” even features a crow cawing along amid the yodelly fluff. - Tom Lanham
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Prefix Magazine
(September 12, 2007) - The title of Jesca Hoop's debut album, Kismet, could easily refer to the twists of fate that led to its existence. Certainly it seems like destiny that Hoop would land a five-year tenure as nanny to the children of Tom Waits, whose influence is spattered generously across Kismet. Another bit of good fortune came in 2004, when Waits's publisher, Lionel Conway sent a demo version of "Seed of Wonder" to the highly influential radio host Nic Harcourt at Los Angeles station KCRW, who helped make the song one of the most requested in the station's history. Without an official release to her name, Hoop was tapped to open for the Polyphonic Spree during its summer 2007 tour. Read more...
NY Magazine
(September 3-10, 2007) – Precious Tom Waits-approved singer from California delivers inventive, fantastical folk-pop poems.
Liner Notes Magazine
(September 2007) - Kismet, Jesca Hoop’s unpredictable debut album will keep you on your toes. Read more...
Filter Magazine
(Fall 2007) - Hoop's music is that of modern fairytales and skewered folk stories. Raised in a Mormon community, fate landed her as the babysitter to Tom Waits' children, thus further encouraging her to perform. The result of these experiences is a debut album of both otherworldly allusion and modern-day observance. "Money" has dense, bulky rhythms with a melody that trails like stardust whilst laying shame on artists' willingness to sell out for hard, cold cash. What is most enrapturing about this album is Hoop's voice. Although her vocals are glossed with clear, vibrant production, it's her natural ability that brings her stories to life. Reminiscent of Bjork, there are intriguing hints of Scandinavian influence in Hoop's voice, but when employed within her melodies, she unleashes her art to a devastating affect. Kismet is an unusual and endearing collection of songs, and Hoop is unforgettable in her beauty and charisma. Grade: 86%
- Jonathan Falcone
Slant Magazine
Kismet is a fitting title for singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop's debut album. The song "Seed of Wonder," which fell into the hands of an influential L.A. radio tastemaker by way of Hoop's employer and mentor Tom Waits (she worked as his kids' nanny for a spell), is a kaleidoscopic assemblage of bridges and verses that overlap and repeat, recounting Hoop's creative journey from "stagnant well," in which spiders fantastically strummed their webs and called her to join them, to prosperous "tapped spring." The song, however, comes too early in the album; it's the kind of paramount burst that would play more satisfying as a climactic piece rather than a wellspring for what follows (like the equally powerful but more modestly arranged "Enemy" and "Love is All We Have," an ode to New Orleans that coasts on the sounds of a creaking boat and a rousing melody of "Level me now/Love is all we have").
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Before meeting Waits, Hoop grew up in a strict Mormon home where MTV was banned and singing murder ballads and church hymns in four-part harmony was the norm, the effect of which can be heard in the bundles of vocal overdubs throughout Kismet. Hoop's lyrics unravel like free verse, and her voice shifts from alpine almost-yodeling to a deeper, sultry register (often all in the same song), so it's no surprise to learn that she counts the likes of Kate Bush and Björk as influences. "Silverscreen" finds the singer in a sort of film screening purgatory where home movies are shown ("Gates of Heaven/There is me on the silverscreen/I hope they did good editing"), while "Money" addresses the challenge of maintaining artistic integrity in the face of "cheddar" ("Where go the misfits on the fringe/When the edges are all rounded out?"). Despite signing with a major label, Hoop has still managed to record an offbeat yet accessible album filled with carnivalesque flourishes, and it seems her inner freak has been anything but dulled.
Laist.com
LAist.com interviews KCRW’s Nic Harcourt (September 3, 2007) - LAist: KCRW and MBE in particular are well known for giving new and unsigned artists their first airplay. Of those who you've debuted, which was your favorite (whether or not they were everyone else's fave)?
Harcourt: Damien Rice and Jesca Hoop are two of my favorites. Jesca has her first full length a new album coming out soon and we started playing her years ago after I got her demo via Tom Waits. Read more...
Zink Magazine
(September 2007) – That’s no typo. Her name is Jesca, not Jessica, and her debut album, Kismet, (Sony) is as offbeat as she is. Not only does Kismet sound drastically different from song to song – incorporating elements of folk, pop, jazz, country, blues and rock – there are also frequent and rather surprising tonal shifts within the songs themselves. A delightful mixture of Edie Brickell and Fiona Apple, Hoop turns every track into a prize-filled box of Cracker Jacks with her off-kilter guitar riffs and kooky keyboards. You never know what you’re going to get, but that’s part of the fun. Ease into the ride with sensationally quirky standouts “Silverscreen” and “Seed of Wonder.”
Entertainment Weekly
(August 22, 2007) – About “Intelligentactile 101”: This NorCal newcomer’s debut CD, Kismet (out Sept. 18), comes with an elliptical endorsement from no less a musical legend than Tom Waits, whose children she once nannied: “Jesca’s music,” he offers in a press release, “is like a four-sided coin.” (Sure, Tom, whatever you say.) Hoop shares some intriguing imagery of her own on this standout track, where she crows about “swinging from the stars/On an umbilical cord.” What does it all mean? With a melody this bewitching, you might not care. Read more...
Filter Magazine
(July 25, 2007) - The El Rey Theatre was turned into a recruitment rally of sorts at the sold-out Polyphonic Spree show with special guest Jesca Hoop presented by KCRW July 18.
The troops were rallied in the theater by opener Jesca Hoop who beautifully warmed the stage with her enchanting songs promptly at 9 p.m. Coifed with a fur hat, tousled brunette hair and a simple T-shirt paired with jeans, her gentle vocals filled the room captivating the audience with her delicate tales for just under 30 minutes. Jesca made the most of a cramped stage already set for the 20-something members of the Polyphonic Spree and performed her songs with a modest set up producing a sound that was anything but.
Her performance elicited resemblances to a stripped down Bjork or even Mirah, yet still all completely her own as she effortlessly sang her well-crafted songs that can only be sung so true from experience. Hoop’s own tale is fanciful in itself, discovered by the legendary Tom Wait’s as she was working as his nanny and living out of a van in California, Hoop has just completed her forthcoming debut album, Kismet, to be released by Red Ink Sept. 18 and yet she’s already quickly becoming KCRW’s darling and performing to sold-out audiences on the West coast.
Filter Grade: 95%
Jesca Hoop’s ‘Kismet’ is one of Filter’s Weekly Picks Week of 08.06.07
All Music Guide
Santa Monica fell under Jesca Hoop's spell in autumn 2006, making her "Seed of Wonder" the most requested song in her local radio station's history. Hoop re-recorded it for her debut Kismet album, with assistance from Stewart Copeland, whose complex, ever-shifting rhythms enhance the number's uniqueness, sliding it toward hip-hop here, prodding it into a Native American dance there. Hoop is the master of such musical shifts and slides, and Kismet beautifully highlights her constantly altering perspectives. "Out the Back Door," for instance, swings dramatically from hip-hop to blues before leaping unexpectedly into drum'n'bass, while Hoop twirls her vocal styles in even more directions. The blues edge a clutch more tracks to wonderful effect, yet the singer is equally at home with folk, as she beautifully displays across the dreamy "Enemy" and the sublime "House in Heaven." The latter was lyrically inspired by a dramatic Chinese legend, and musically gives a twist of the East to British folk before sweeping into a '40s-styled jazz revue. The elegant, sophisticated "Love and Love Again" takes that latter style to its logical conclusion with a glamorous Hollywood musical arrangement, as Hoop swells and deepens her vocals in homage to Judy Garland. "Love Is All We Have" is a bit less successful, the mostly acoustic backing haunting, but her lyrics seeming a bit trite when themed to the man-made catastrophe that followed Hurricane Katrina. Much better is "Money," which instantly evokes Liza Minnelli's classic but moves the scene and theme from a Berlin café to the L.A. music industry, albeit musically via a South American tango club. "Summertime," a harmony and harmonics-drenched piece of confectionery, is lovely, but one of the least interesting songs on this enchanting and challenging album. It is, of course, the label's pick for first single. There are so many more fascinating songs within that it almost pales in comparison, for this is a set to leave one breathless with wonder. - by Jo-Ann Greene
