Jesca Hoop: “Born To”
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The album art for Jesca Hoop’s upcoming LP The House That Jack Built (due out June 25th) shows a fitting image. Overlaid a photograph of an erupting volcano is Hoop herself, a California native that is bursting at the seams with ideas and creativity. While her earliest recorded forays were built with loops, Hoop’s third album finds her increasingly comfortable in front of a band.
She already has some heavy-hitters in her corner. Tom Waits took a shining to her music while she worked as a nanny to his kids, and her first album featured the polyrhythmic drumming of former Police-man Stewart Copeland. Just in the past year, she’s toured as a backup singer to Peter Gabriel and taken her own work on the road in support of the avant-bluegrass group Punch Brothers.
That’s an eclectic galaxy of stars as company, but those various strains–the bawdy jazz, the globe-hopping rhythms, the pop hooks, and complex musicianship–all figure in Hoop’s songs. The House That Jack Built was recorded with three different producers, but rather than sounding scatter-shot, it comes across as lively, with musical contributions coming from every corner. First single “Born To” bounces along smartly while asking why some of us are born into wealth while others are born into famine. It’s a heady question, but it’s obvious Hoop is taking that talent she was born with and running with it.
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