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Artist......: Hippo Campus
Album.......: Flood
Label.......: Psychic Hotline
Genre.......: Indie
Catnr.......: PSY-051
Source......: CDR
Rip.date....: 2024-12-22
Str.date....: 2024-09-20
Quality.....: 917 kbps avg / 44.1kHz / 2 channels
Url.........: http://hippocampusband.com
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\ / # title time \ /
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1. Prayer Man 3:38
2. Paranoid 3:41
3. Fences 3:38
4. Everything At Once 3:49
5. Flood 3:59
6. Corduroy 3:10
7. Slipping Away 3:00
8. Brand New 3:31
9. Tooth Fairy 3:19
10. Madman 3:25
11. Forget It 4:01
12. Closer 3:21
13. I Got Time 4:31
14. Paranoid (Radio Edit) 3:41
15. Brand New (Radio Edit) 3:32
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\ / ________ Runtime 54:16
,\ /... . . .... .... \ / ' Size 375.71______
:\/ ', \ / , \ /
' '... ..\ /.. .. .....:. .. .... .. . ..\ /.
: Release Notes: \/ , \/ ,
' '
,: Hippo Campus were sitting in the green room of a sold-out :,
: amphitheater show at the start of the Summer of 2023 when they :
:' realized they had a major problem. Their fourth LP simply ':
,: wasn t good enough. Singer Jake Luppen had been listening to the :,
: band s work as they rolled around the country, trying to tease :
:' out how much work remained. All of it, he soon decided. The ':
,: soul wasn t there, obfuscated by the need to sound sophisticated :,
: and the overwhelming ambition to make the best Hippo Campus LP :
:' ever, a deeper and more profound record that reflected how ':
,: their lives were changing. :,
: :
:' They d committed to that vow with longtime producer and ':
,: collaborator Caleb Wright a little more than a year earlier, :,
: soon after a party where they celebrated the release of LP3. :
:' That very night, the call came that a longtime friend had ':
,: unexpectedly died. They started this band as kids and enjoyed :,
: quick momentum, their thrill-a-minute live shows and :
:' charismatically experimental pop albums creating ':
,: almost-instant, avid attention. But this was Hippo Campus first :,
: close brush with death; as adulthood encroached, the actual call :
:' of mortality reminded them of the stakes of art, friendship, ':
,: and life. :,
: :
:' So they committed to doing something major, even if it meant ':
,: taking five years to do it. They took the task seriously, too: :,
: getting sober for an entirely improvisational session at North :
:' Carolina s Drop of Sun months later, regularly attending ':
,: therapy as a full band, writing more than 100 songs in only a :,
: year. That was all well and good, until Luppen and, really, all :
:' of Hippo Campus decided they didn t actually like what they ':
,: were making. Life and work had been dark in their orbit for a :,
: second death and dejection, addiction and anxiety. This uneasy :
:' epiphany wasn t helping. ':
,: :,
: So that night, in the dressing room, they called an audible. :
:' They were going to start over. Three months later, the ':
,: four-member core of Hippo Campus rendezvoused with Wright and :,
: producer Brad Cook at Sonic Ranch, a playground-like studio :
:' complex on the Texas border. They gave themselves 10 days to ':
,: cut the tracks they liked best, to make something to which they :,
: could commit at last. And Cook, in turn, gave them an edict of :
:' no second guessing or listening back, only forward momentum. ':
,: Less than two weeks later, they emerged with what they d given :,
: themselves half a decade to make Flood, or the best album Hippo :
:' Campus has ever made. ':
,: :,
: You can immediately hear as much in a pair of wondrous songs :
:' toward the end, when the love-lost-and-found sing-along Forget ':
,: It fades into the bittersweet and beautiful ache of Closer, a :,
: gem about trying and maybe failing to surrender your trust to :
:' someone else. This is a band that has learned to grow up by ':
,: learning to let go. When Hippo Campus finally stopped trying to :,
: force the issue of making a masterpiece, they tapped :
:' intersecting veins of vulnerability and urgency, walking away ':
,: with 13 tracks that reckon with their uncanny lives through at :,
: least that many totally absorbing hooks. :
:' ':
,: During the last several years, Hippo Campus has had to navigate :,
: the tougher wages of success. They are, of course, grateful that :
:' a pop band they named on the lark of some psychology lesson ':
,: blew up, but it certainly eliminated the segue from adolescence :,
: to adulthood that most of us enjoy in relative privacy. How :
:' could they survive inside and alongside this thing they had ':
,: created and had outgrown them? And what s more, how could they :,
: endure the vagaries of the music industry, so that they didn t :
:' let a disappointing tour or disspiriting release demoralize ':
,: them? Or, to ask the cumulative question, how do four people :,
: connected so intimately for so long grow as individuals while :
:' preserving the bond that makes what they do so special? Or is ':
,: that actually too much to ask? :,
: :
:' For a minute there, the answer seemed possibly like yes. But ':
,: soon after that improvisational session, the band returned to :,
: its own Minneapolis studio and dug in. They stumbled upon :
:' Everything at Once, with Nathan Stocker s tricky little ':
,: guitar lope becoming the basis for the slowly rising rhythm of :,
: drummer Whistler Allen and bassist Zach Sutton. Stepping outside :
:' for some space, Luppen quickly penned a thesis of ':
,: self-criticism and self-forgiveness. Being less than the :,
: expectations of an industry, a family, or a faith are totally :
:' normal, he suggests in an anthem of empowerment that is almost ':
,: casual. He gives himself the grace of being human: You gotta :,
: lay down sometimes, be patient sometimes, Luppen sings, layers :
:' of lean vocals crisscrossing one another like light beams. And ':
,: feel everything at once. :,
: :
:' That is precisely what Hippo Campus do best on Flood feel ':
,: everything and transmute it all into songs that are inescapable. :,
: Take Brand New, three minutes of brilliantly coiled pop, its :
:' spring-loaded rhythm lifting a guitar line built from pin ':
,: pricks skyward. It s about being ruined by the letdown of a :,
: failed relationship and then finding a way forward, toward :
:' something so good you haven t even imagined it yet. It sounds ':
,: that way, too. There s the completely compulsive Tooth Fairy, :,
: a quick-moving meditation on the confusion of interpersonal :
:' dynamics. Hippo Campus smear bits of gentle psychedelia around ':
,: a rhythm, riff, and hook that have the sleek lines of a sports :,
: car; the result is a dynamic wonder, a song that feels emphatic :
:' at the start but reaches full triumph by the end. Inspired by ':
,: staring down cycles of addiction too long without taking steps :,
: to break them, Corduroy finds the space between a bummer :
:' country blues and a sweetly devotional waltz. Its vows of love, ':
,: trust, and doubt are buoyed and also undercut by its slow rises :,
: and falls, a musical portrait of trying to take that difficult :
:' next step. ':
,: :,
: The sentiments on Flood are raw, real, and unguarded, a :
:' testament to Hippo Campus dropping preconceptions of how they ':
,: had to sound after so many failed attempts to re-record these :,
: songs. They wiped the slate clean, starting over without beliefs :
:' about what Hippo Campus or this record needed to be. Still, ':
,: sophistication lurks in subtle key and tempo changes, in the :,
: almost innate shifts that a band of longtime best friends can :
:' tap after so much time spent helping to shape one another s ':
,: musical language. Flood doesn t need to tell you it s important :,
: or interesting; it simply is, just by virtue of how it s :
:' written, built, and rendered, a map of what it s like to feel ':
,: everything at once. This rebirth is accompanied by a crucial :,
: career shift for Hippo Campus, too, as they exit the traditional :
:' label system to issue LP4 via Psychic Hotline, a truly ':
,: independent imprint run by peers and pals. If you re working to :,
: let go of expectations, why not jettison them all? There s a :
:' bravery to that, and you can hear its revivifying spirit in ':
,: every second of LP4. :,
: :
:' Early into the endlessly propulsive Paranoid, where stunted ':
,: acoustic strums undergird an inescapable jangle, Luppen asks an :,
: existential question: Is there something waiting out there for :
:' us at the finish line? For the next three minutes, the band ':
,: cycles with him through his woes, from the title s overwhelming :,
: worry to notions of dislocation and loneliness. (Also, is there :
:' any other refrain ever that manages to make the phrase so ':
,: god-damned fucking sound so catchy and natural?) But in the :,
: final verse, with his voice breaking through a scrim of :
:' distortion, he stumbles upon a new credo: Wait, I wanna give ':
,: this life all that I have in me. That is precisely what Hippo :,
: Campus have done with Flood after realizing it doesn t take a :
:' lifetime or, well, five years to do just that. ':
: '
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\ / GREETS: \ /
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\ / iPC BOSS HiT2000 1way UKi i8 RNS \ /
\ / MANDY DV8 pLAN9 BUTT \ /
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\ / H O U N D \ /
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