Jesca Hoop, Long Wave Home | Album review — State of Sound

ALBUM REVIEW

Long Wave Home

Jesca Hoop

by David Rea

1 May 2026

Release date: 1 May 2026

Label: Last Laugh Records

JESCA HOOP has always appeared a nomad at heart. She has lived in yurts, a converted chicken shack and under a tree for a summer. Her wanderings combined with music from an early age. On childhood road trips she'd harmonise with her siblings and parents, and in her teenage years, she'd sing as she skated or walked between jobs in farming and construction.

She's made a good chunk of her seventh studio album Long Wave Home on the road too, leaving behind the slate-grey skies of her hometown of Manchester, England to visit studios across the UK, describing the trip as a 'forage'. Something of the ancient oak trees and dewy pastures she slept beside during her journey have seeped in. This is an album of plucked, fingerpicked and bowed strings, horns and harmonies, and a touch of twang and woody marimbas. But the sun-dappled soundscape has plenty of dark shadows. Born of relationship friction, Long Wave Home advocates for love in a darkening world.

'My life took an unexpected turn in 2025,' Hoop explains in the album's press release. 'Many people exited my life... like a bus pulling into the station. Some of these relationships were of great importance, so I had much to wrestle with in these verses.' The album's overarching theme of disconnection extends beyond the human heart, however. As she investigates the boundaries of relationships on 'Adam', so she explores how we police the borders of the world on 'Playground', and the consequences of failing to do so with compassion. As she puts it, 'I don't draw a line between a love song and a political song'. Later on the album, Hoop extends the theme of disconnection further, questioning how, in a world atomised by technology, we might build political solidarity ('Signal to Noise'), or forge genuine human connection ('Long Way Home')?

“When the second refrain finally resolves with the line 'what use could hatred be?' it lands with exquisitely cool anger.”

The album roughly breaks down into two portions, forming a single, satisfying arc. The first comprises incisive, crafted songs, teeming with hooks, melodies, invention and surprise. As always, Hoop's voice contains multitudes, not only ventriloquising a cast of characters but also adding in trills and other baroque touches.

On opener 'Adam', an acoustic guitar, piano and cello weave a leafy soundscape. Hoop's voice is intimate and close, but the apparently warm message has plenty of bite: 'when it comes your time who's gonna be there?'. The song is punctuated by a sudden, soaring two-note figure: 'Aaa-dam', which becomes increasingly impatient as the song progresses. 'Big Storm' melds folk rock with country twang to create a breezy menace, and another earworm 'Designer Citizen' channels anger at her native USA: 'Lucky me, I'm American / Ringing the golden era in'. The arrangement is decorated with deliciously sardonic, quasi-military horns and drums.

On the second portion of the album the shadows begin to lengthen. There is discordance, stuttering drums and an electric guitar congealed with distortion. 'Playground' is a plainspoken and genuinely haunting protest song, advocating for the children of Gaza. When the second refrain finally resolves with the line 'what use could hatred be?' it lands with exquisitely cool anger. 'Viv Over Drink' is a clear-eyed plea to a self-destructive friend, delivered with monosyllabic concision: 'Be done with make-believe / show the bonds that we made / over the bones of an unmarked grave'. On the cinematic 'Long Way Home' the orchestral arrangement and sky-gazing lyrics create an icy expanse. Hoop searches for meaningful connection in the firmament, only to find a world alienated from itself by technology. The quietly grand closer might just be Hoop's most ambitious song yet.

Having previously partnered with producers Blake Mills (Fiona Apple, Alabama Shakes), John Parish (PJ Harvey, Tracy Chapman) and Tony Berg (Taylor Swift, boygenius), Hoop has taken the production reins for the first time on this project. It is a move as confident and fearless as the album it accompanied. Long Wave Home is full of human warmth, poetic insight and musical delight in equal measure.