In the Brain of Hippo Campus

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

http://www.onestowatch.com/blog/an-interview-with-hippo-campus-the-peoples-band

https://whenthehornblows.com/content/2018/9/30/interview-hippo-campus

http://grandstandhq.com/2018/08/hippo-campus/