Customer Reviews

Kismet

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Excellent debut from a very talented singer/songwriter with a unique take on a lot of old music styles and forms. But don't get me wrong...this is very contemporary with a big fresh dose of eclectic. And her voices truly weave spells. It is funny to see the favorable comments from Tom Waits in the product synopses because he is the perfect person to have an opinion about this disc. I caught her wonderful concert in Los Angeles last spring and I am very happy to see her get a label. No one else sounds like this stuff...and that is a good thing. Now I would love to see her collaborate with someone like Tom Waits. The results would be great!

Jesca Hoop is utterly original. Captivating, funky and strangely mystical, listening to Kismet is like taking a walk through a Tim Burton-influenced enchanted forest. Each track is perfectly unique and distinct, yet each melds seamlessly with the next.

Though her voice is so pure and shockingly versatile that a reasonable comparison is nearly impossible to draw, there's something vaguely Elizabeth Fraser about her abstract approach to songwriting and lyrics, yet her clear, crisp, decipherable vocal stylings suggest something more direct.

I'd say Tori Amos, but Hoop is not nearly so hard-edged. I'd go with Imogen Heap, but Hoop is much more original and focused. She's ... well, she's unlike anything I've ever heard, but I've had the album on repeat since the day I bought it. Buy it. You won't be disappointed.

I had heard a review and bits of this CD on the radio, and it sounded intriguing and new. And indeed it is both - varied, unusual, melodic but with a very personal stamp. So far I've been playing it daily, and find Hoop's treatment of her themes always charms and holds my interest. Can't imagine anyone not enjoying it - I've bought several for friends and family.

Forget the hugely overrated A Fine Frenzy, Jesca Hoop is where its at. At once bewitching and instantly memorable, this is a great album with varied genres - jazz, blues, R&B, Pop, and a little bit of old school 1960s Motown thrown in for good effect!

I would say that Jesca sounds most closely like Norah Jones and Imogen Heap together. Her songs are very multi-layered and well produced, but they're meant for a folk-pop crossover-loving audience. Thankfully, I am part of this audience, and am glad to see that this deserving performer finally has an album in the Amazon Top 150. She's been performing for years, and its glad that she gets this recognition.

Alongwith Paige Aufhammers' debut CD from earlier this year, this is an absolutely essential album. You won't be disappointed. In fact, its much better than "Not too Late" by Norah Jones, if thats the kind of music you like.

The whole album is strong, with a range of moods, beats, syncopations, harmonies and appealing, unusual ways of putting together and owning what appear to be quite a variety of influences. Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell are frequent comparisons, but this is very much its own thing.

The by-turns rich, dark, stark, tangy harmonies of "Seed of Wonder" remind me of the Mysterious Bulgarian Voices that were all the rage a couple decades ago, very infectious. The song has an arresting alternation between overdubbed layered vocals and simple vocals, rather like call and response. Just one of many interesting musical touches. Someone put a lot of work into the production. (I wrote more about this song below.)

You can rock the house with "Out the Back Door," about the secret (to parents) night life of the young. (Pump up the sub.)

By contrast, the song about Hurricane Katrina, "Love Is All We Have," is appropriately aching and funereal, a beautiful lament of what was washed away, with a refrain of all that remains for some. Not a new idea, of course, but it's the kind of thing we must sometimes remind ourselves of, effectively done here. The melody has stuck with me for days.

I really don't want to go on about every song, but another standout is "Intelligentactile 101," a playful spirit's-eye view of entering this world. It has a strong driving pulse and brims with the elemental childlike joy and wonder of life captured in the lyrics.

My current favorite cut is the last one, "Love and Love Again," by Hoop and David Baerwald, who also recorded and plays on the song. I've been whistling or humming it all day. The arrangement is reminiscent of a ballad from fifty years ago, with strings (or some facsimile thereof) and piano, but it has a very distinct Hoop flavor of its own. I enjoy her smoky, somewhat dirty execution of the vocal, surprisingly nimble, if not quite as precise as it could be. It would be fun to hear it sung by someone, perhaps a jazz vocalist, who would articulate the deceptively tricky passages more cleanly. I'm not sure if I'd like it better that way, but I'd like to find out. Great song, in any case, and I expect to hear it covered by others in coming years.

All in all, a fun, lively, unusually strong and adventurous debut.

(I originally wrote the following when Lee Armstrong's one-star review was the first of the three featured reviews and seemed to call for some response. It might still be of some interest.)

Lee complains of bizarre lyrics in "Seed of Wonder." I don't mind bizarre lyrics myself. (I was listening earlier to His Name Is Alive's Home Is in Your Head--that's truly bizarre, and brilliant.) But these lyrics aren't so bizarre, and surely not as bizarre at Lee's interpretation of them. I really hope his remark implying they're about menstruation was just a joke.

The song begins, "Once my love stood still like a stagnant well for so long, you could hear the song of spiders - strumming fibers calling her to the web, my river sits in ebb." OK, that seems odd, but it will make good sense by the end. Soon a hint: "All I want is to be writing, to be writing." Then towards the end: "Once that wish did land like a star in my hand - it burned and it burned and it burrowed in, soar through the source searching ... finally that tapped spring come runnin' like a river, my song it came ... right away I went writin' I went writin' right away I was hummin' I was hummin' right away I was singin' I was singin' right away I was lovin'."

See? It's about songwriter's block. The image of spiders strumming their webs is unusual, to be sure, but in a good, fresh way, appropriately evocative of a cobwebbed place long unvisited (her creative wellspring), where there remains some small, subtle but vibrant call, what we might call a creative itch, which by some spark, here fancifully represented by a falling star (wish, falling star), suddenly grows to a burning driving urge, burning through to unblock a torrent of creative energy. Fine images, not all completely new, of course, though the spider-strumming one is new to me, but all given a fresh look (much of which I haven't touched on here--I've quoted less than half the lyric).

The association of love and creativity isn't spelled out, but we can think about that ourselves. The title is ambiguous, meaning either a wondrous seed or the seed that wonder is, possibly both. Is wonder the spark? The allusion to the mustard seed of faith is of course a biblical one, used here to refer to the way the smallest bit of faith can grow to something mighty.

Among the ways a lyric can be good is being evocative of interesting, provocative images, feelings and ideas. This lyric is good in those ways, and it has good rhythm, rhyme and other pleasing poetic charms too.

Lee finds Hoop's voice shrill and thin. Her voice is of the breathy, high, girlish, sometimes mumblish kind that has been very popular for female pop singers for a good while now. If you don't like it, there's a lot of good music from the last 25 years you don't like. The slipping around notes that Lee complains of appears to be an artistic choice that generally works well for the songs.

It's true that the same simple guitar notes are played over and over, which is of course typical of rhythm guitar (for a more repetitive example, check out Johnny Cash's famous "I Walk the Line"). But the notes that repeat here are catchy and serve well as the basis for a very unusual, complex use of vocal harmonies and syncopated rhythms.

Analysis aside, "Seed of Wonder" is instantly attention-grabbing, quickly addicting, and rewards repeated listening.

I absolutely adore this incredible cd. I have listened to it so many times and every time I have a discovery of style, feeling and sound. Jesca's talent is on the cutting edge of designing a new unique sound so completly fresh and creative unlike any other music. I bought a copy for tons of friends and everyone loves it too.

Nic Harcourt has probably introduced more hip modern music to Americans than any other DJ. If you are able to check the playlist during his Internet show and write down the names of the artists or songs, you can amass a collection of CDs that none of your coolest friends has heard of but will love listening to.

I consider Jesca Hoop to be one of his brilliant discoveries. I used the word "shape-shifting" above because you will hear a multitude of influences in her singing--not, as another reviewer said, because she is a mimic, but because she channels some of the music I've loved most in my lifetime: the Beatles, Kate Bush, Bjork, Laura Nyro.

Her voice draws you in like a lullaby and twirls you around like a whirlygig. It's whimsy and winks, gorgeous harmonies, and imagination. She picks you up by your shirt collar and flies you across the universe. And she seems to be a very interesting person.

Not nearly. 5 stars are great for A Fine Frenzy. 5 Stars are perfect for Nina Nastasia's On Leaving. 5 stars are not nearly enough for Kismet.

This album is original, beautiful, insightful. It is toe-tapping hum along pop, but with folk sensibility. I love it, and I have only heard the first 7 songs!

So, if you were thinking, "Maybe I'll buy that new Feist Album", SKIP IT. BUY THIS!

It's been a long time since I heard an artist who obviously has a deep wit and diverse view of the world. The lyrics!! Jesca Hoop lends herself well, with grace and still and an innocent awkwardness that is almost her armor in a world she obviously is all to familiar with. MORE MORE MORE

I heard a featured story and interview with Ms. Hoop on October 23, 2007. It blew me away. Shortly afterwards, I bought the CD. I have listened to it several times now, and have come to the conclusion that this is a Fantastic Collection of Songs by a Very Promising New Artist. The only thing I can compare it to is later works by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. May God bless Ms. Hoop. I hope she has much more music to share with us!