Buy Now
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Feb 8, 2017Past, present, and future rest patiently before Hoop, and she’s weaved them all into her most endearing album yet.
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Feb 8, 2017Memories Are Now is a gorgeously delivered elegy to heartbreak and loss; powerful, perfectly executed songs to bring comfort and strength to the weary, broken and scorned.
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Feb 28, 2017Hoop has been producing thought-provoking, arresting folk music since Kismet was released nearly a decade ago, but this is her most cutting, cohesive, and critical record yet.
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Q MagazineFeb 14, 2017Memories Are Now is an inventive nine-song affair. [Apr 2017, p.112]
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Feb 13, 2017The restlessness is counterweighted by wit and songwriting power.
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UncutFeb 9, 2017Memories Are Now is built on stacked voices, sparse rhythm and twisted folk shapes, but the execution varies pleasingly. [Mar 2017, p.32]
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Feb 9, 2017At once daringly astute and gleamingly sincere, assertive and eloquent, Hoop’s Memories Are Now should have no trouble in picking up those fans who just recently hopped on board during her outing with Beam and running with them.
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Feb 9, 2017Whether Memories Are Now shifts her from a cult concern, and recipient of handshakes and hugs from heavy friends, into something else remains to be seen, but there is something compellingly unique and hard to pigeonhole here.
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Feb 8, 2017Memories Are Now is a composed but not utterly controlled place, and within that tension, Hoop’s music and message, together, find their highest vibrancy.
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MojoFeb 8, 2017With Memories Are Now, she understands exactly when to use the bridle and bit on these wild, wise songs. [Mar 2017, p.98]
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Feb 8, 2017With any due credit to Mills, who not only produced but shares instrument duty here, Memories Are Now is exquisite-sounding while it contends with a songwriter who not only has a few things to get off her chest, but seems to make a call to action.
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Feb 8, 2017The texture of the more desolate songs, like Pegasi, the Americana-tinged Simon Says and the folky gospel of Songs Of Old is where the soul of the album seems to really reside, but when the two sides of Hoop’s talent come together, as on Unsaid, it has a magic all of its own.
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Feb 13, 2017Memories Are Now, perhaps more than anything she has done in the past, is closely engaged with the present moment, yet so lyrically and musically idiosyncratic that it never sounds overtly political.
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Apr 17, 2017Hoop’s experimental tack often requires repeated listens, but it’s creativity and not mere quirkiness that ultimately leaves alingering afterglow.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 24 out of 25
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Mixed: 0 out of 25
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Negative: 1 out of 25
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May 16, 2017
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Feb 20, 2017