‘Does your name have an i in it?‘ She said to someone screaming ‘Jessica’ to her at the Henry Fonda theater where she was opening for the Eels last week, ‘Because mine does not’, she continues while smiling. She is a charmer, she speaks softly and seems to carefully choose her words. And her sound? Soooo eclectic! So diverse but always served by one of the clearest and brightest voice I had ever heard.
She came on stage with her guitar and only one other musician and a female friend doing back up vocals. But with Jesca Hoop, simplicity transforms into complex, convoluted arrangements, unconventional songwriting, adventurous musical pathways, mixing all kinds of influences. Her experimental folk-pop-cabaret-blues is anything but common and linear, switching from one style to another in the middle of a song, and it can surprise you like something coming from another period of time.
‘Money’ inevitably made me think about Tom Waits, and when I read she had been the nanny of the three Waits children, it all made sense, it was so obvious! She got some exposure, and if this certainly does not explain her talent, it makes the connection with the eccentric iconic madman.
Some of her songs are syncopated patchworks, her voice shifting into many directions, so high at times and immediately going deeper as if she was playing with her voice, almost childlike at times, fleeing all over the melody like a strange free bird.
Tom Waits himself has described Jesca Hoop’s music as ‘like going swimming in a lake at night’, whatever you can take of this description, her music is full of catchy new sensations, like a complex and creative adventure you want to live till the end.
Listen to her singing ‘Four dreams’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peNsdXgUlyc