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HIPPO CAMPUS ALBUM BAMBI OUT TODAY

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HIPPO CAMPUS

ALBUM BAMBI OUT TODAY

 

TRACK LIST
01 Mistakes
02 Anxious
03 Doubt
04 Bambi
05 Why Even Try
06 Think it Over
07 Bubbles
08 Honestly
09 Golden
10 Passenger
Click Here To Stream / Download Bambi
Read Hippo Campus profile with Billboard
“The Minneapolis quartet’s sophomore record is a massive step forward, taking its cues from the best songs off debut Landmark to craft an album-long interrogation of mental health and masculinity.” – Boston Globe
“The minimalistic chaos is beyond delightful… It’s so utterly absurd and yet every last bit feels full of intention.” – Indie Shuffle
“With a new embrace of synths, layers and nuance, it’s simultaneously bolder and more tender, with guitar jangle giving way to gentle grooves, and frontman Jake Luppen’s use of falsetto more extensive and effective than ever.” – Billboard
“Minnesota quartet oscillates between melancholic lo-fi gems and colorful, energetic tracks.”
– SF Examiner
“The Minnesota-based indie sweethearts are talented beyond their years and demonstrate a certain lyrical worldview that feels altogether refreshing and unpretentious.” … “Hippo Campus excel at heightened sensory imagery – it’s a staple in nearly every song and makes them some of the most carefully attentive songwriters in the game.”  – Atwood Magazine
[Credit: Pooneh Ghana – Download]
Full Album Bio here –
When Hippo Campus formed in 2013, their intentions were pure and simple. “We were in high school and the main idea was, ‘Let’s start a band and make our friends dance,’” Sutton recalls. “There was no real context to what we were doing—it was just total creative joy.”
But over the past five years, that context has shifted dramatically. The world around them warped into something bleak and unsteady, and reckoning with mental health issues became more and more crucial. On their sophomore album Bambi, the St. Paul, Minnesota-bred band navigate that upheaval with deliberate self-reflection. The result is a selection of songs that drift into much darker terrain, but unfold with a frenetic yet fragile beauty that makes even the most painful moments feel glorious.
Not only driven by exacting introspection, Bambi was also shaped by cultural shifts, including the #MeToo Movement. “That really made us take a look at how toxic masculinity has influenced the way we see ourselves and the world overall,” says Luppen. “In the past we might have been apprehensive about being super-vulnerable, but now we’re more aware of how important it is to come forward about dealing with depression or anxiety. Because if more men are able to do that, they might be less likely to express those feelings as anger or violence.”
Hippo Campus approached the making of Bambi with an eye toward the undoing of any distorted, social-media-fueled perceptions of the band. “Social media promotes this weird non-reality when it comes to artists and bands, where they get put up on a pedestal and treated like some kind of upgraded human,” says Stocker. “We’d much rather make community happen with our fans, which is the whole reason we started this in the first place.”
Partly recorded at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio in Chicago, Bambi finds Hippo Campus working again with producer BJ Burton (Bon Iver, Low, Francis and the Lights), who handled production on their 2017 full-length debut Landmark. And in sculpting Bambi’s distinctly inventive arrangements, Hippo Campus significantly expanded their use of drum machines and synth.
“We were getting sick of starting songs with riffs—we wanted to change it up and get out of our comfort zone,” says Stocker. “Plus there were a lot of late nights on this record, and when you’re in a dark room there’s nothing that sounds like a Juno-60. We just got dreamy with it.”
The band steered away from their formerly collaborative songwriting process, with Luppen, Stocker, Sutton and Allen each writing and demoing their material individually before bringing it to the table. “When you craft a song from the ground up all on your own, it allows you to make it more personal and to write whatever you feel without holding back,” says Luppen. “I think we were all finally able to get more honest about things like mental health, and in my songs I interrogated my relationship in a way I’d never had the confidence to do before.”
Throughout Bambi, Hippo Campus match their relentless self-examination with a joyfully adventurous sonic approach, ultimately transforming the emotional experience of the problems they’re exploring. On “Anxious,” urgent rhythms and untamed vocal delivery draw an unlikely power from raw vulnerability. “That song came from something I’d written a while ago, kind of a scribbling of all my social anxieties,” says Sutton. “For a long time I was living with these indefinable worries that I couldn’t comprehend, and I was never really sure if it was just a part of a growing up or something more than that.”
Meanwhile, on the album’s title track—a song about “feeling a lack of control over your mood swings, and trying to embolden the part of yourself that could help you get through that,” according to Sutton—Hippo Campus’s otherworldly vocals, delicate guitar lines, and sweetly determined lyrics have a strangely uplifting effect. And on “Mistakes,” the band’s choir-like harmonies and ethereal tones make for a haunting contrast to their meditation on the idea of “wanting to be the best you can for the people you love, but feeling like you can’t really carry that out,” as Luppen puts it.
Elsewhere on Bambi, Hippo Campus capture all the dizzying complexities of relationships with songs that endlessly morph in mood and texture. “Why Even Try” brings soaring melodies and glistening guitar tones to its frustrated musings on a possibly doomed friendship, while “Bubbles” offers a heartfelt apology to that same friend, brilliantly twisting the mood with its unhinged harmonies and frenzied guitars. And on “Golden,” an ode to Luppen’s girlfriend, Hippo Campus build an epic love song out of skittering beats, shimmering synth, and beautifully unruly guitar work.
One of the band’s greatest hopes for Bambi is that the album might help others in dealing with their own pain. “I’ve always considered the responsibility of art to be representing your specific experience,” says Sutton. “We’re saying, ‘This is what I’m doing now, this what I’m living like.’ It’s about sharing what you’re going through, so maybe someone else will feel less lonely.” And as Stocker points out, Bambi may find a particular connection with those feeling shaken up by the chaos of current times. “The only I’m sure about with this album is how unsure it is,” he says. “I want people to feel as confused as we are about everything, because confusion can be an interesting thing. When you don’t totally understand what’s going on, you never stop thinking and questioning and trying to figure things out for yourself. I think a lot of good can come from that.”
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES
10/05 – Milwaukee, WI @ Pabst Theater ^
10/06 – Chicago, IL @ Riviera ^
10/08 – Pontiac, MI @ The Crofoot $
10/09 – St. Louis, MO @ Pageant ^
10/10 – Covington, KY @ Madison Theater ^
10/12 – Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works ^
10/13 – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade ^
10/15 – Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel ^
10/16 – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall ^
10/18 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer+
10/19 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5 ^
10/21 – Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom ^
10/22 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE ^
10/24 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club ^
10/27 – Boston, MA @ House of Blues ^
10/28 – New Haven, CT @ College Street Music Hall ^
10/30 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle ^
10/31 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle ^
11/02 – Birmingham, AL @ Iron City Music Hall ^
11/03 – New Orleans, LA @ House of Blues ^
11/05 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Jones Assembly ^
11/06 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger ^
11/07 – Dallas, TX @ Canton Hall ^
11/09 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s ^
11/10 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall ^
11/23 – Minneapolis, MN @ Palace Theatre
11/24 – Minneapolis, MN @ Palace Theatre
01/25 – Kansas City, MO @ The Truman*
01/26 – Denver, CO @ Ogden*
01/28 – Santa Fe, NM @ Sunshine Theater*
01/29 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren*
02/01 – LA, CA @ Novo*
02/02 – San Francisco, CA @ Fox Theatre*
02/04 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom*
02/06 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theater*
02/07 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theater*
02/08 – Vancouver, BC @ Imperial
^ w/ The Districts
* w/ Now Now
$ w/ Michigander
+ w/ Palm
UK & EUROPEAN DATES
02/14 – Manchester, UK @ 02 Ritz
02/15 – Glasgow, UK @ The Garage
02/16 – Newcastle, UK @ The Riverside
02/18 – Birmingham, UK @ Institute
02/19 – Dublin, IE @ Dublin Academy Green Room
02/21 – London, UK @ O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
02/23 – Bristol, UK @ SWX
02/24 – Brighton, UK @ Concorde 2
02/26 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique / Rotonde
02/27 – Cologne, DE @ Luxor
02/28 – Paris, FR @ La Maroquinerie
03/1 – Amsterdam, AN @ Tolhuis (Paradiso Noord)
03/3 – Berlin, DE @ Lido
03/4 – Hamburg, DE @ Molotow
03/5 – Copenhagen, DK @ Hotel Cecil
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