When: 7.30pm on Thursday 3 October 2019
Where: HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, Manchester M15 4FN

We’re delighted to be presenting Jesca Hoop at HOME!

A culmination of life and musical experience, uncompromising in its vision, STONECHILD, the new studio album from Jesca Hoop is a self-described ‘compassion project’.

Released on July 5th by Memphis Industries, STONECHILD is Hoop refined and defined. Beautiful, subtle and stark, her fifth album, the follow up to 2017’s highly acclaimed Memories Are Now, is her best yet.

Despite being a long term resident of Manchester, Hoop has until now returned to her native California to record. This time round however, ‘it was,’ according to Hoop, ‘time to step out of my comfort zone, my safe place,’ venturing south to Bristol to team up with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding, This is the Kit). Parish’s minimal and purist approach helped clarify Hoop in her ideas and subtly yet effectively realigning her sound. The simplified arrangements draw focus to the fundamental sophistication of the songs.

While Hoop’s trademark finger-plucked guitar and ethereal textures remain, the songs and their presentation are ever more direct. Parish ‘was a gentle collaborator until he killed one of my darlings’ Hoop jests. ‘I’ve never been so brutally edited, and I wasn’t shy about expressing my discomfort at the sight of my work on the cutting room floor. He said, you will forgive me, and in some way I think I actually enjoyed that treatment…being stripped back to the bare basics… albeit painfully.’ STONECHILD ventures further into fresh territory with other voices joining the narrative, with Kate Stables (aka This is the Kit), Rozi Plain and Lucius singing the choruses and expanding the sensual depth of the sonic bloom.

Embedded in Hoop’s song writing is an inherent unpredictability something she ascribes to being ‘guided more from instinct than study’. Perhaps more than ever before, STONECHILD sees Hoop lead us through uncharted landscapes across the course of the album. ‘When I look at the history of my life, I realise I have the breakdown of not only my parents’ marriage but also the breakdown of their parenting to thank for the wild and unexpected course that my life would take. I went looking for a raw and rugged world. the opposite of what I was raised in.’

The album title was settled after a trip to a Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, where the STONECHILD is a sad, compelling display of an unborn foetus carried by a woman for over 30 years. ‘They become a hard ball of bones, a rock. Phonetically, it’s a beautiful sounding word – hard and soft – but also, I am taken by the idea of carrying something for a long time, perhaps in secret and then giving it up. I hope I have made an album of substance. There is meat on the bone.’

Special guest is Chloe Foy. Chloe Foy writes a brand of melodic, homegrown music, bursting with colourful lyrical and textural inflections evocative of much of the music she loves. Taking inspiration from classical music as much as wider transatlantic trends in folk and indie, Chloe’s songs comprise of carefully constructed arrangements that delicately compliment her cryptic lyrics.

This is a 10+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

Book tickets now. Tickets are also available through Homemcr.org, via the venue’s box office and on 0161 200 1500.

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