A song begins with a view from an airplane window showing a stadium-sized whirling vortex. As the plane descends, the vortex resolves into thousands of people spinning together, with terror on their faces and trampling when individuals lose footing. A late mother appears dragging five children through the crowd. Despite the grim scene, the music stays peppy and pretty, with a churning melody and a Dorian-tinged shiver. Ascending harmonies in the chorus create an ecstatic, congregational lift. A whispered bridge lists items for the apocalypse, including a torch, Zippo, pocket knife, whistle, space blanket, and first-aid kit. The result is a lasting, unsettling reframe of Armageddon.
"Hoop looks out an airplane window and sees a whirling vortex the size of a stadium. Is it a body of water? A crop circle? No-as the plane descends, the scene comes into focus: thousands of men, women, and children, spinning "like thread around a spool," terror on their faces, trampling those who lose their footing. The uncanny vision is made even eerier when Hoop spots her late mother dragging her five children through the human tide."
"Despite the grimness of the scene, the tone of the song is peppy and disorientingly pretty, with a shivery Dorian twist in its churning melody. The chorus' ascending harmonies rise like an ecstatic congregation, and a cryptic, whispered bridge checks off a packing list for the apocalypse: "A torch, a Zippo/A pocket knife, whistle/One space blanket and a first-aid kit.""
"Hoop is a California-born singer-songwriter who left the Mormon church at 16, lived off the grid for a few years, nannied Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's children, and ultimately decamped for Manchester, England, nearly two decades ago; she has a knack for rendering big subjects in head-turning ways. She has an eye for a vivid detail, a fondness for trenchant metaphors-her 2019 album STONECHILD was titled after a rare medical phenomenon in which a woman unknowingly carries the petrified remains of a dead fetus in her body, sometimes for years-and a cheerful disregard for musical convention."
Read at Pitchfork
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