More about: Hippo Campus

Almost four years on from their groundbreaking sophomore album Bambi, and Hippo Campus return with LP3, a record bursting with tender glee and intricate self-reflection. Subverting expectations as they always tend to do, this third outing is colourful, meaningful, and as existential as always, a real, real treat.

No strangers to exploring complicated themes within their music, Hippo Campus guide us through the meandering thoughts, worries, and nuances of growing up, bringing memories to mind long since forgotten. Their uncanny ability to recall situations and fears you once thought were welded to you and you alone cements them as masterful wordsmiths of the modern age, recreating the highs and lows of youth, and weaving them into the intricate sonic fabric of their music in a way as personal as it is powerful.

Album opener ‘2 Young 2 Die’ begins with a solitary horn — a lonely fanfare tinged in a melancholic ambience that seems to grasp onto Hippo Campus wherever they go. But as the track progresses, the mellowness is lifted and we’re treated to an amalgamation of sounds not too dissimilar to those found on Bon Iver’s 22, A Million. iThe symphony created is so synthetic it becomes completely and wholly organic, a testament to the talent of Hippo Campus.

‘Bang Bang’ continues to explore the curiosities and insecurities of growing up, this time to the tune of sweet synthy keys, and echoing riffs that create a whirlwind of shifting, layered nostalgia.

Wanting to return to the days when making music brought them real happiness, the band turned to the earnest nature they once knew. “The priority was finding the feeling we that we had in the early days” noted frontman Jake Luppen, and it’s these heartfelt, almost lucid connections to the years gone by in which this record shines. Whether it’s the element of youthful confidence in ‘Ride or Die’, or the confusion about one's sexuality in ‘Boys’, Hippo Campus take the organic and transform it into a mass of beautiful, meaningful, writhing noise.

LP3’s standout track comes in the form of the delightful ‘Listerine’. Pairing a blissfully sweet vocal melody with often dark, brilliant lyricism. “You can’t washed the fucked up out of me” sings Luppen, a slight smirk in his voice, making the track's overall atmosphere all the more compelling.

Standing firmly as perhaps their most beautiful body of work, LP3 possesses all the beauty that we’ve come to expect from Minnesota's greatest exports. Spiraling through the yearning, arresting, and often devastating aspects of growing up, it’s an unusual space, a beautiful space, and one that you could get lost in over and over again.

LP3 arrives 4 February via Grand Jury/Fat Possum.

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More about: Hippo Campus