With their recent fourth LP, ‘Flood’, giving the band a solid excuse to once again trot around the globe, Hippo Campus spill the details on the lessons learned over the two and half years since their last UK visit.
Words: Finlay Holden.
It’s a cold Tuesday night in December, and Hippo Campus sit backstage at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, preparing for their first UK show since May 2022. Fresh from an Asia tour which included the band’s debut performances in several territories, singer Jake Luppen and guitarist Nathan Stocker appear energised rather than exhausted. They’re inspired by the world around them and, most importantly, each other.
Recalling that the Chinese government required them to “have a setlist that was reviewed by the government months prior,” the quartet (and live six-piece) welcomed the challenge that a reduced set can bring when paired with their recent naturalistic material and a polite Bejing crowd.
“People were really listening to what’s going on from a musical standpoint,” Jake reflects. “If we were to do something like that in the US, people would just start talking over it. You can’t really go into ambience for 4 minutes and have that feel compelling. This was the first time that we were able to live in this uncomfortability on stage, and that then turned into: we are dictating what the fuck is going on right now, and that felt exciting.”
Nathan continues: “And we’re all leaning into it together rather than counting down the seconds until it’s over. That was a huge sign of growth for me, at least. We just started playing something and we’ve been going for three minutes with no idea of where it’s going or how it’s gonna end. We have the patience to stick with it – fuck yeah, dude. Maybe that’s a testament to how the record is continuing to unfold itself as time goes on.”
This embrace of spontaneity and creative constraints might have daunted Hippo Campus previously, but through ‘Flood’, they’ve learned to welcome it. Moving from ‘LP3’s glitchy pop production to stripped-back, acoustic arrangements – without vocal filters – aligned with the raw honesty in their lyrics, though it took extensive band therapy to achieve this vulnerability.
“It was pretty difficult!” Jake exclaims. “I knew what the mission statement was, and I was definitely behind it, but it presented a lot of challenges to embrace myself in that way: hearing my voice coming out of the speakers so raw and experiencing the songs without any barriers or trendy tricks. There was no artifice really, and it’s hard to deeply look at yourself that directly.”
Their ambition to create their finest record meant expectations soared, and what normally took three months stretched to almost two years. Producer Caleb Hinz maintained their vision while Nathan generated material at unprecedented rates, as Jake wrestled with the urge to release. As internal tension mounted, the group sought external guidance.
“That’s why we brought Brad [Cook] in at the end of the day,” Jake affirms. “With the amount of material we were churning out, it was all a bit overwhelming. As a producer, his greatest skill set was the ability to create rules for the game. He was able to tell us: you can’t fuck with this anymore than you already have, this is who you are. It was a great lesson to discover that we were already done, and all the stress, all the second-guessing was honestly pretty superfluous.”
In hindsight, the strengths and weaknesses are obvious; the goal is to take on these experiences and channel them into the next step, the initial inklings of which are already forming, as Jake hints. “I can reflect on each of our records and understand the thing we did best at that moment in time, but I don’t think we’ve made a record yet where every element is firing on all cylinders. ‘LP3’ brought some cool risky production choices; on ‘Bambi’, we were going far out with the way shit was screaming out of speakers, ‘Landmark’ was very pure guitar playing, and then ‘Flood’ is about the lyricism and directness. In the future, it’s gonna be about marrying a lot of those different things together to break new ground with everything maxed out.”
“I wouldn’t make a record in the same way again under any circumstances, but we can take that understanding now into future things and be able to experiment with production again, but in a way that’s not so self-competitive. Chances are I’ll probably be disappointed with something on the next one, too, but that’s the nature of this thing; we like to just keep pushing. By the end of the process, I learned a lot and have a newfound appreciation for how Hippo Campus exists without any thrills. This shit still works at its most base level.”
Discomfort is a word that comes up a lot here (“Oh, we love to be miserable”). That unsettled feeling is why this album took so long to create, and although they are certainly getting better at dealing with it, Hippo Campus are focusing on reconciling those emotions rather than stopping them from arising in the first place. In fact, challenges are welcome in this camp.
“It’s difficult to recognise when you’re internalising something so hard, but there’s a seemingly easy fix; open up, tell someone what’s going on, talk it out,” Nathan explains, clearly revitalised by the aforementioned therapy sessions. “As long as that space exists, you can make anything work, but it’s an ongoing process. As for the discomfort, the moment I become uncomfortable, I try to fall into the practice of recognising it as an opportunity to be vulnerable, to be exactly the thing that is my job; getting naked and leaning into that discomfort. It’s never going to be perfect, which I think is good because I don’t think we’d all still be interested in this if we didn’t have shit to figure out. It pushes you to adapt and grow and achieve a different level of artistry that you might not have even imagined prior.”
“With the work we’ve put in now, on the next shit we can worry less about the hand holding element and just get down and make something nuts,” Jake smiles. And what does he mean exactly by nuts? “Just something mischievous, something sonically deviant. It doesn’t necessarily have to break speakers in the way I wanted to when I was younger, but even writing the perfect pop song in this environment is a deviant act. I just wanna be fucking devious. Bring back the naughty in a way that isn’t going to damage ourselves or be too cheesy.”
2021 EP ‘Good Dog, Bad Dream’ – almost all of which they play on stage a few hours after this conversation – is mentioned as a touchstone for this deviance and a reference point for their next project. “That was the peak of our naughtiness. The comedy in that record I do enjoy, but there’s a way to marry that mentality with ‘Flood’s lyricism where it’s brutal, real-life shit. That EP is how we are deep down at our core, it’s very much how we talk to each other and exist in the world day to day. In our thirties, we should embrace and lean into that.”
With Jake turning 30 in May and Nathan just recently passing the milestone, the group are somewhat directly reflecting on what that means for full-time musicians. “I feel so much better,” Nathan declares. “It’s not because of my age but because of the social baggage that we throw at the word ‘thirty’ and anything beyond that. It’s nice, I’m leaning into it; this clear-cut vision of, oh yeah, that’s what I did in my twenties, and this is what I do now.”
‘I Got Time’, the hopeful closing track on a thematically arduous record, shows positive signs of Hippo Campus dealing with this. “It takes stock, looks ahead and acknowledges that we still have a huge runway,” Jake comments. “It often feels like that isn’t the case; we’re getting older, but we’re only thirty and on our fourth record. Most bands I love have like 12 fucking albums.”
“Whatever age we’re at, we’ll only be that age,” Nathan interjects. “There is such a necessary embrace of the realisation that truly, you’ve got time. The contrast between ‘Fences’ and that song is huge. For that very reason, ‘Fences’ is early and ‘I Got Time’ is the end. On ‘Flood’, we start out on ‘Prayer Man’ like fuck, I’m running out of time, I don’t want to waste it and I’m trying not to. By the end, we manage to find a bit of peace and hope for the future.”
‘Flood’ certainly reflects the journey that this band have been through internally, and seemingly very in character, it’s been quite the rigorous ordeal. So, next time around, there’s no further crises to be had, right? “No guarantees,” Nathan shrugs, while Jake simply summarises: “We’re very much four pessimists who make reasonably optimistic music, sometimes.”
Hippo Campus’ album ‘Flood’ is out now.
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