The Many Sides of Jesca Hoop

Tom Waits (who she worked as a nanny for) says this about Jesca Hoop; "her music is like a four-sided coin." There's good reason for this. Her debut album Kismet only has 11 tracks, but in those tracks Jesca is able to cover a lot of ground stylistically. In fact, it's almost as if she's still learning where she fits into the spectrum of music and is trying on several different costumes to see which one she feels comfortable donning. Her voice is quite strong, and that allows her to approach songs from many different angles without apparent strain.

The album opens up with Summertime, a shimmery tune that almost feels at points like it could come from some contemporary female country singers. Then fast forward to track three, Enemy, which is a soft acoustic number where her voice floats along innocently and dreamily and then out of nowhere soars. From there move ahead a couple of tracks to Money and you'll feel like you're listening to a sultry lounge singer draped over a piano in a dark smokey bar. Then move on to Havoc In Heaven, with it's triangle tinkles, it's instrumentation with lots of space between notes, and precise lyrics, and you'll think about comparisons to Bjork. This is followed by Out The Back Door, a song that could have come from Lily Allen's corner.

I'll stop here and simply offer the above up as evidence of Jesca's versatility. The album is due out September 18th. In the meantime, enjoy the following:


Jesca Hoop - Enemy : Kismet

Jesca Hoop - Out The Back Door : Kismet

Watch her play with the Ditty Bops at Yahoo! Music's Studio performing her song Summertime.

Visit her website and become her friend on MySpace.

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Tom Waits - Blue Valentine : Blue Valentine