Hippo Campus is Reborn in Their New Album, ‘Flood’
After writing and recording over a hundred songs for countless, monotonous hours in the studio, Hippo Campus was hit with a major slap to the face: they hated what they were making. The band felt they were trying to sound like someone else, playing the music they thought they were supposed to rather than what they wanted to. Hippo Campus had been in indie-rock for around a decade, and just coming off of their third tour, it seemed the craft had lost its magic. They vowed then to start from scratch and create a record that was not only great, but something that reminded them that making music was fun. Thus, the excavation began: they preserved what they liked about the previous songs, extricating the things they didn’t, and stripped Hippo Campus down to its bare bones, capturing 13 songs in just under two weeks.
The album’s opener, “Prayer Man,” is a psychedelic, deeply personal entreaty: “I need a prayer man, anything's fine / Something to hold me cut like a knife,” singer Jake Luppen cries out on the chorus. It’s an instant classic from the minute the guitar kicks in; bittersweet and introspective, the perfect blend of verse and candor, “Prayer Man” beautifully sets the tone for the album.
In the recording process, the band was forbidden by producer Brad Cook from second guessing or listening back to the songs, so the album is all forward momentum–it’s Hippo Campus, raw and unfiltered. “Paranoid,” the album’s third single, makes this clear from the very first line: “Do I love you, or am I just too afraid to leave?” Luppen cleverly ponders the existential, the anxiety of trying to explain the unexplainable, and the subsequent frustration when you come out on the other side with nothing to soothe your fears.
“Everything At Once” is a brief moment of respite, a time out on the self criticism and quick tempo to slow down and find a way forward: “Feel everything at once,” as in “take it in, then let it go.” It’s a hopeful, almost folk-y ballad, and a nice change of pace before death anxiety rears its ugly head once again. “Flood,” ironically enough, begins “Made every second count, never took a breath.” The lyrics are loaded with self doubt, and under them an acute sense of hunger: “I just want to believe what I’m talking about.” The bridge is guitarist Nathan Stocker’s time to shine, his solo yearning is intensely powerful as it builds up to one final, desperate chorus.
Kicking off the B-side, “Slipping Away” describes the fear mortality instills in us all: everything is changing, against your best wishes, and you’re left behind to pick up the pieces, grasping the hands of the clock as the world moves on without you. It’s sonically a more mellow approach to the dread of fleeting time, while “Tooth Fairy” feels like a chase: rambling, stream-of-consciousness lyrics race after an ever-increasing tempo, instruments volleying back and forth before coming to an explosive climax that perfectly illustrates the need to escape your own head. Death’s looming presence makes it hard to unwind; in the grand scheme of things, our life isn’t long at all—80-ish years doesn’t seem like nearly enough for all the things we hope to do, and “Tooth Fairy” deftly voices that notion.
But, as Albert Camus once said: “There is not love of life without despair about life.” Rounding out the album,“I Got Time” paints mortality in a new light: life is beautiful because it’s fleeting; we should savor it while we’ve got it. The song is wistful and warm, perfectly accentuating the reminder to let yourself linger–contrary to the fears the album articulates, you’ve got all the time in the world.
Flood isn’t just another Hippo Campus record–it’s a rebirth. The album is humble, cohesive, and strikingly sincere, a true testament to the group’s time as Hippo Campus—and simply as friends.
