Gig review: Jesca Hoop at Howard Assembly Room, Leeds

Her guitar playing, which is full of circular motifs, is the root to her distinctive sound. The rolling notes are the foundation to her songs, with their shifting melodies and unexpected chord changes providing emotional heft to her lyricism. It’s a style that eschews clear genre; it would be easy to categorise as folk but this wouldn’t acknowledge the blues-indebted rhythms to Sudden Light or the baroque pop of Pegasi.

Almost as distinctive is her image, with each album arriving with a different look. Tonight she’s dressed in vivid floor-length kimono, the voluminous sleeves of which threaten to become entangled in her instrument’s strings with every note. Her two band mates – Rachel Rimmer and support act Chloe Foy – complete the aesthetic in matching black kimonos.

They present a pared down reading of material from Hoop’s latest album Order of Romance, which was recorded with a four-piece horn and woodwind quintet. Foy brings post-punk simplicity to her bass playing on One Way Mirror, while Rimmer’s hand-held drum is used almost like a washboard on the quietly devastating I Was Just 14, which reflects on Hoop’s Mormon upbringing (“I lost my mother when I lost my virginity”).

Their real contribution comes not in their instrumentation – which also includes keyboards and rhythm guitar – but in their three-part harmonies. They bring an organic warmth where Hoop once constructed complex vocal arrangements through loop pedals. The layered, tribal vocals on Hatred Has a Mother add a playfulness to Hoop’s call for ‘revolutionary love’, while on Sioux Falls they bring sinister Wicker Man folk to lyrics that use the death spiral of ants as a metaphor for US politics.

Unafraid to tackle dark subjects, Hoop’s music nonetheless remains accessible and optimistic about the human capacity for change. She also knows how to keep it simple and direct when needed, as on the acapella closer Storms Make Grey the Sea. Delivered with jazzy inflection, she could be directly addressing the audience when, with a sweeping arm gesture, she utters a captivating, “For now, you belong to me.”