Degenerate, counter-culture, crying socialist
Hip-to-lazed crazed abstractionists
We're weird, but Lord knows we're trying.
Stripped of music, these words don't sound like they’re meant to be in a song, let alone a smashingly successful third single of a landmark band. Even less likely do they seem like the lyrical musings of a 21-year-old frontman and self-described introvert. Enter Jake Luppen, Nathan Stocker, Zach Sutton, and Whistler Allen - the four members of Hippo Campus, a nascent band that'll ensure your memory (like mine) won't forget them anytime soon.
Allow me to introduce you.
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Hailing from Minnesota, the boys formed Hippo
Campus in 2013, during their last years of high school and set out to establish
themselves as a band of the people. The development of their signature buoyant
sound, laden with clever, intricate lyrics, has been hard to label - something
the label-wary band is thrilled by. Hippo Campus considers itself neither indie
nor alternative, but rather, a "people's band" that deeply resonates
with listeners and values those connections. Frontman Jake said in an
interview, "it's like alternative people pigeonhole us as an indie band,
and indie people pigeonhole us as alternative." Their first album, landmark,
released late February of 2017, hit on many social themes of growing up and out
of the formative years. Though it won the band recognition, the members made it
clear they had a lot more to offer, quoting in an interview that "things
are constantly growing, but nothing is ever really good enough to settle
on…it's important to not get comfortable."
Enter Bambi.
A pensive, somber, and strikingly vulnerable
take on the honest songwriting that already defined the band, the sophomore
album was just released last month. Deviating from sunny guitar riffs and
optimistic melodies, it relied heavily on synths and percussive rhythms,
marking a dramatic - and deliberate - departure from the band's former sound.
It successfully upended any perceptions of their music that might have begun to
settle. Deeply self-reflective, Bambi approached topics of mental health
on a greater, more personal level than seen in the band's prior songs. It was a
clear response to broader and more major cultural shifts outside of the
fanbase, affected by the band's perceptions of several recent societal
upheavals that have quickly become historic, from the #MeToo Movement to the
shooting at Stoneman Douglass.
To make it happen, the band took to a
different creative process. Formerly collaborative, the band decided to work on
song material individually before coming together. In effort to maximize the
amount of honesty that went into the music, this strategy was easier for the
members to handle through individual self examination. The band was able to
collectively recognize the need for this shift in approach, having been working
together since high school - none other than the St. Paul Conservatory for
Performing Artists.
The years spent at the conservatory was the
first of several stages of the known creative process, as Dr. Nancy Andreasen
writes in A Journey into Chaos: Creativity and the Unconscious. The
research paper details this period of preparation as a time where the
basic information and skills are able to assemble. Becoming more serious
musicians required hours of practice, but becoming a functional band meant
building a common understanding and form of communication. Indeed, receiving an
education allowed the boys to not only refine their instrumental abilities but
establish music as a central facet of their lives.
In the supportive environment of their
friends, the band was able to explore and cultivate a unique sound and identity
in the absence of industry pressures and expectations. Zach, the bassist,
described this a time of "total creative joy," where their only
mission was to make their friends dance. This incubation period allows
further subconscious connections to be made; for the band, these connections
would prove crucial during the incoming moments of inspiration as they
began working on their first album, and again when they worked on their second.
The band blew right through the production step for their second album,
heavily focusing their efforts for only a handful of months. Known for heavily
drawing from honest emotions, the band wanted to ensure those emotions were
still fresh during the creative process. This mental state of absorption, known
as flow, was coined and examined at length by psychologist Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, and further describes the method behind Hippo Campus's
musical madness. In this mindset, pulling together even the most disparate of
words can be possible. As Jake sings, they're weird, and they certainly are trying.
With talented versatility, a knack for
understanding emotions (as well as sharing their own), and the fearlessness to
wield both, Hippo Campus has proved itself a band that indisputably stays in
the brain.
Works Referenced
How do you think their work would be been affected if they chose to work together from the get go instead of taking the time to work individually and reflect? Do you think this process makes it more difficult as a band to make cohesive songs?
ReplyDeletePersonally coming from Minnesota and having a group of friends that were very involved in the local music scene in high school, I remember listening to Hippo Campus when they were just known as a fun Minnesota band. I love that you decided to write about them, and I loved that you touched on their change in the creative process because I can completely see the shift that they made.
ReplyDeleteI am a Hippo Campus fan and love that their focus is on making music they love and are proud of. You can really feel the emotion you discussed when you listen to their work. It's refreshing to find such great talent that is in it purely for the love of their trade.
ReplyDeleteI did not hear about Hippo Campus for quite awhile - not until a YouTube video for Buttercup popped up in my feed. Ever since, I have been addicted to their sounds. They are a very unique band and a great choice to write on.
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