Reading up on Jesca Hoop before watching her perform left me none the wiser. Brought up by strict Mormon parents in Wyoming she rebelled and headed to California, where she ended up as a nanny to Tom Waits’ children. Waits, not a man prone to endorsing other artists, described her music as “like swimming in a lake at night”. After a while honing her whimsical kookyness on the LA circuit she moves to Manchester, England where she becomes good friends with Guy Garvey of Elbow.
Supporting the much lauded, and slightly disappointing Fanfarlo, she owned The Thekla, bringing the heaving boat to a solemn hush.
Duke Special’s Songs from the deep forest is available on Nokia Music
Two moments, two eras, give me the same buzz
Elvis – Just can’t help believin’
I just can’t help admitting that I’m always drawn to the Elvis ‘fat in Vegas’ era. There was a grandness about it, an honesty in its dishonesty. The two moments in this song are at 22secs when for some reason the crowd cheers and applauds in recognition. Hackneyed now, honest and responsive back then, the drama, the energy. The other moment is 3.07, when he tells the backing singers to ’sing the song baby’, then 4.31 ‘take it’. I just love it, one of the lines that sprouted a thousand impersonators.
One of the most finely crafted pieces of music you’ll ever hear. The pay-off moment is two thirds of the way through (3.30) as the guitar screams in your earphones like an angry cat in a dark forest lit up by a strong torch, moments after killing a robin red breast.
Music is many things to many people. That’s the mantra for this little blog, as it gathers the random thoughts, opinions and ideas of a handful of music enthusiasts toiling behind the scenes at Nokia Music. We don’t pretend to be experts (OK, that’s not strictly true), we’re just big fans of music, be it [...]