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HIPPO CAMPUS

Hippo Campus

Flood

    Hippo Campus’ singer Jake Luppen had been listening to the band’s work as they rolled around the country, trying to tease out how much work remained. All of it, he soon decided. Obfuscated by the need to sound sophisticated and the overwhelming ambition to make the best Hippo Campus LP ever, a deeper and more profound record that reflected how their lives were changing. But Luppen and all of Hippo Campus decided they didn’t actually like what they were making.

    So they called an audible. They were going to start over. And three months later, the four-member core of Hippo Campus rendezvoused with longtime collaborator Caleb Wright and producer Brad Cook at Sonic Ranch, a playground-like studio complex on the Texas border. They gave themselves 10 days to cut the tracks they liked best, to make something to which they could commit at last. Less than two weeks later, they emerged with what they’d given themselves half a decade to make Flood, or the best album Hippo Campus has ever made.

    The sentiments on Flood are raw, real, and unguarded, a testament to Hippo Campus dropping preconceptions of how they had to sound after so many failed attempts to re-record these songs. They wiped the slate clean, starting over without beliefs about what Hippo Campus or this record needed to be. Still, sophistication lurks in subtle key and tempo changes, in the almost innate shifts that a band of longtime best friends can tap after so much time spent helping to shape one another’s musical language. Flood doesn’t need to tell you it’s important or interesting; it simply is, just by virtue of how it’s written, built, and rendered, a map of what it’s like to feel everything at once. This rebirth is accompanied by a crucial career shift for Hippo Campus, too, as they exit the traditional label system to issue LP4 via Psychic Hotline, a truly independent imprint run by peers and pals. If you’re working to let go of expectations, why not jettison them all? There’s a bravery to that, and you can hear its revivifying spirit in every second of LP4.

    Early into the endlessly propulsive “Paranoid,” where stunted acoustic strums undergird an inescapable jangle, Luppen asks an existential question: “Is there something waiting out there for us at the finish line?” For the next three minutes, the band cycles with him through his woes, from the title’s overwhelming worry to notions of dislocation and loneliness. (Also, is there any other refrain ever that manages to make the phrase “so god-damned fucking” sound so catchy and natural?) But in the final verse, with his voice breaking through a scrim of distortion, he stumbles upon a new credo: “Wait, I wanna give this life all that I have in me.” That is precisely what Hippo Campus have done with Flood after realizing it doesn’t take a Lifetime or, well, five years to do just that.

    TRACK LISTING

    Prayer Man
    Paranoid
    Fences
    Everything At Once
    Flood
    Corduroy
    Slipping Away
    Brand New
    Tooth Fairy
    Madman
    Forget It
    Closer
    I Got Time

    Hippo Campus

    LP3

      In the years between 2018’s BAMBI and LP3, Minneapolis’ Hippo Campus -- made up of vocalist/guitarists Jake Luppen and Nathan Stocker, drummer Whistler Allen, bassist Zach Sutton, and trumpeter DeCarlo Jackson -- has grown up and into itself. Although the five-piece has been friends since middle school and put out a number of studio releases since its inception, it’s the new record, LP3, that’s the most honest portrait of who Hippo Campus is. It’s also a study in the nuances of growing up -- coming to terms with mortality, the confusing journey of sexuality, bottoming out, seeing decisions from the night before in the harsh morning light; finding your identity as a person and as an artist -- how that can be a collision of elation and shame, painful and joyful all at once.

      LP3 marks a sort of ego death -- and ultimately feeling okay with that. So much of LP3 was written in the chasm between grappling with the value of your own art and the larger, chaotic context of the world. It traverses the end of relationships, of careers, and the chance of meeting yourself as a brand new person. If you take the signifier of “musician” away, what does it mean? And how do you expand your identity outside of work? Here, it’s something the band works through. And, in the end, it happens with the same ride-or-die crew at your back to hold you down -- or up -- the entire time.

      Over the last few years, the Hippo universe has expanded outward. Luppen and Stocker both put out solo records as Lupin and Brotherkenzie respectively, and the two also teamed up with Caleb Hinz to put out the debut Baby Boys record while DeCarlo Jackson founded, and collaborated with multiple bands around the Twin Cities, including DNM, Arlo, and FPA. Navigating solo projects and new dynamics and the spotlight alone is humbling, bringing up new insecurities and defense mechanisms. It was challenging in its own way to branch outside of Hippo -- and it made the eventual return to the project feel like coming home.

      “With LP3, Hippo felt like a very safe space to express those things because you have your best friends around you, rallying behind you,” Luppen says. “And each person could chime in with their own experience. I felt like it was a very safe space to be earnest.” Here, Hippo Campus killed what they knew and started again.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. 2 Young 2 Die
      2. Blew Its
      3. Ashtray
      4. Bang Bang
      5. Semi Pro
      6. Ride Or Die
      7. Scorpio
      8. Listerine
      9. Boys
      10. Understand

      Hippo Campus

      Good Dog, Bad Dream

        Good Dog, Bad Dream is the new EP from Hippo Campus, and the St. Paul, Minnesota five-piece's first new music since their 2018 sophomore album Bambi. It finds the band at their most honest and vulnerable to date, with five new intensely cathartic tracks tinged with confessions and dark humor. It's a collection of songs that came together with ease, and without pressure -- a wildly different experience than the typical Hippo Campus recording process. The band - made up of vocalist/guitarists Jake Luppen and Nathan Stocker, drummer Whistler Allen, bassist Zach Sutton, and trumpeter DeCarlo Jackson -- assembled Good Dog, Bad Dream with a genuine sense of freedom and enjoyment as part of their first sessions in their new Minneapolis studio space. It’s a celebration of brotherhood, and the “all for one, one for all” mentality that has permeated Hippo Campus’ work since the very beginning.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Bad Dream Baby
        2. Deepfake
        3. Sex Tape
        4. Where To Now
        5. Mojo Jojo


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