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Hippocampus band sacramento1/17/2024 ![]() Stocker: Yeah there’s this weird process of rejection, where you have to forcibly reject something that you had before - it’s like building muscle or something. Zach Sutton: Oh thanks! That almost got cut! That two-minute ending coda of “Passenger” may be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever done. There’s a lot of vibes on here we have never heard from you before. ![]() We like this, and we want to do this.” Which is not to say we don’t love our old sound, but it’s just a constant thing of moving forward. And that was what we needed to do to be most honest with ourselves. We spent those four months just like going, going, going, and the music that we made we honestly felt like reflected us during that time. Was there a moment where you made a decision to take chances, use synths, be more expansive, and not just deliver more of what might have come to be considered the signature Hippo Campus sound? The hard stuff was really just balancing feelings and emotions within the band. It was the second record we’d made with him, so we kind of had a language established, and it was just easier to communicate this time. I think we just learned how to use our time more wisely. ![]() So this record was made in four, four and a half months. So when this process came around, we wanted to expedite things, work quicker, not second-guess ourselves. We spent a really long time on it, like a year and a half making it, and there was a lot of second-guessing. Jake Luppen: I think Landmark was a really big learning process for us. How different does the lead-up to this second album feel? Jake, I saw you recently compare it to having a second child - that you know what to expect now. We sat down with the band’s “core four” - Stocker, Luppen, bassist Zach Sutton, and drummer Whistler Allen, along with their de facto fifth member, horn player DeCarlo Jackson - and just as we began a wide-ranging conversation at Brooklyn watering hole Spuyten Duyvil, what song should come on, but Mott The Hoople’s ageless anthem “All The Young Dudes.” Perfect. Ten days before Bambi’s birth, Hippo Campus came to New York for promo and an intimate album preview gig. That’s changed, on tracks like “Doubt,” “Honesty,” “Why Even Try” and a remarkably atmospheric, almost post-rock opener “Mistakes.” Hippo Campus have never been shy about dealing with “big” questions - growing up, masculinity, misogyny, divorce and even death have all been explored in past songs - but a Midwestern reticence for heart-on-the-sleeve sharing has kept Luppen, until now, from delving too deeply into relationships, of the big and small “r” varieties. ![]() ![]() Dealing with internecine tension - giving voice to papered-over issues within the band and in Luppen’s own romantic relationship - figures prominently on the record. It’s named after Luppen’s aunt, whose cabin-styled lake house has figured prominently in Hippo Campus’ history, as a place for writing, recalibrating, and mending fences when there was band strife going on. Released last month and accompanied by a gorgeous, Kyle Sauer-directed surrealistic video, “Bambi” is a soulful musing on “serving” oneself - opening up to those closest to you - that’s especially meaningful to the band. There’s no better evidence of the turn than the album’s title track. ![]()
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