The Hem & The Haw

“Throwing some convenient term such as art pop at this alluring music would simply obscure how good it is, how fresh and singular it sounds.”

“[an] utterly seductive album of ten smart and sophisticated pop songs.”

“The Hem & The Haw succeeds on multiple levels with its imaginative song forms, intriguing lyrics, clever and involving arrangements, and that sympathetically dramatic, subtly elevating production input from Bartlett.”

-The Wire


“Alex Sopp has made an extraordinarily musical, beautifully produced debut album. Alex and I worked together with her sextet yMusic. She is a gifted flutist and her gifts extend to her vocal and songwriting abilities. This is a great beginning.”

-Paul Simon

“An extraordinary debut: inventive, sophisticated, dizzying, and dazzling, instantly appealing and consistently alluring. Don’t miss it.”

-Steve Smith, Night after Night

“Her gift for melodic hooks elevates many a song…and packed with dizzying detail, each track is a dreamscape of sorts. We were aware of Sopp’s talents as an instrumentalist, but The Hem & The Haw shows she’s a songwriter of distinction and a singer of authority too. Her goal for the release was to “sweep you away even if just for a moment,” a goal every listener lucky enough to hear this beguiling album will acknowledge was handily met.”

-Textura

 
 

This album came to me in a fit of stillness. I had been moving so much and for so long that I forgot that my favorite thing to do is to just sit. Sitting in stillness involves watching, waiting, listening, and observing. It involves becoming aware of the edges of things - in my case, where my body ends and the chair begins, where a bird call starts and a melody has always existed, where a cloud has always been a storm and the storm is me. When I wrote these songs, I was sitting still and looking at the sea. Yes, the actual sea, but also the sea of my childhood and the sea of my recurring dreams. In the process of writing, I’ve learned that if I look long enough, rooms that I didn’t previously have access to emerge, floating in front of me like hard working tugboats, pulling behind them all the postcards that I’ve written to myself. I’ve learned that if I listen long enough, a vine will always grow out of my head and become a phone cord, connecting me to all the times I’ve wanted to tell you I love you and have held it back.

Tracklist

  1. The Hem & The Haw

  2. North Pole in Summer

  3. Like A Vine

  4. Ah Said Rosita

  5. Rodin’s Hands

  6. Bougainvillea

  7. Door

  8. Roses

  9. Mourning Dove

  10. Loon

Credits

Voice, flute, whistles, synths, piano, drum programming: Alex Sopp

Piano, op-1, mellotron, prophet x, percussion, rhodes, floor tom, drum programming: Thomas Bartlett

Vocals: Sam Amidon

Violin: Austin Wulliman

Viola: Nadia Sirota

Flugelhorns: CJ Camerieri

Trombones: Dave Nelson (*additional trombone arrangement for “Door” by Dave Nelson and Thomas Bartlett)

Clarinets: Hideaki Aomori

Horns: Michael P. Atkinson

Bass: Shawn Conley

Electric bass: Shawn Conley

Drums: Michael Caterisano

Percussion: Jason Trueting

All songs written by Alex Sopp

Produced by Thomas Bartlett and Alex Sopp

Mixing by James Yost

Mastered by Fritz Myers at Platitude Music, NYC