Hoop — Wrap Me Up in Winter (13th Floor Album Review)
Hoop’s Wrap Me Up in Winter is a quietly resonant mini-album that offers warmth, intimacy and a clear social conscience.
The band moves easily between wistful folk and melodic alt-country, using deft string arrangements, subtle woodwind colours and grounded rhythms to illuminate lyrics that shift between inner reflection and outward engagement. Across eight tracks by the two writers, Nick Edgar and Al Baxter, they create songs that feel human and unvarnished.
Edgar’s songs are steeped in meditative contemplation and often turn inwards for answers. The album opens with his reflective yet buoyant End Before the Start: a song built on banjo and strings that asks whether we might like to know our future if we could. It’s a question that lingers throughout his writing, where uncertainty and acceptance coexist in delicate balance. The title track unfolds like breath on cold air, each sparse guitar note and silence holding the emotional weight of connection through adversity. Take Me to a Time recalls the eerie calm of lockdown, its gentle mandolin and spacious strings evoking both peace and pause. Even Outlaw, which celebrates family and home life, carries a tender melancholy, ending as if someone has walked out of the room and quietly closed the door.
In contrast, Baxter’s contributions push outward, translating affection, frustration and protest into movement and melody. His writing moves progressively from the domestic to the social to the planetary. Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way radiates affection for a partner through banjo, mandolin and a rhythm section that moves with unhurried joy. The Elephant in the Room turns the thick-skinned colleague into a symbol of workplace frustration, its jangling guitars capturing the irritation perfectly. Up in Smoke, with its Celtic-inflected jig, transforms political anger over Aotearoa’s tobacco-law reversals into defiant celebration. Finally, Devil’s Choice widens the frame to the climate crisis, recounting a bushfire ordeal in tense 5/4 time as Hammond organ and violin conjure the encroaching flames.
Throughout, Emily Allen’s strings act as conscience and commentary, sometimes cushioning, sometimes cutting through the mix. Rusty Knox on drums, percussion and bodhrán, and Glenn Coldham on bass bring a human pulse that keeps even the weightiest themes close to home. Each songwriter sings their own material in a distinct voice, and across the record this creates a conversation between the personal and the social and political.
Even in a world that can feel cold, hard and unwelcoming, Wrap Me Up in Winter invites us to pause, take stock, and find both resolve and warmth in community, friends and family.
John Bradbury
Wrap Me Up In Winter is due out Nov. 28th.
Album release show
7:30pm Saturday 6th December, DEPOT Artspace Devonport
With special guests: Moon Goose
Tickets depot.org.nz
