Hippo Campus Surrender to Themselves

Isolated on the lone stretch of land that is Sonic Ranch Studios, surrounded by nothing but 2,000 acres of dunes and pecan trees near the Texas-Mexico border, Hippo Campus realized that there was no looking back. It’s hard to get off track when recording an album in the middle of the desert, which is exactly what the Minnesota-bred indie group needed in order to bang out their fourth LP, Flood.

The band gave themselves an ultimatum: a strict lather-rinse-and-repeat process, with no room to edit or toy with the elements they didn’t feel sold on right away. With the guidance of producers Caleb Wright and Brad Cook, Hippo Campus began crafting a record that would, in their eyes, stand the test of time, all while capturing the current moment they were all finding themselves in. This was going to be a raw album spun directly from their core, where they could unabashedly display and discuss the things they’ve been avoiding about themselves for the past few years of their lifespan as a project. It was a reset the quartet desperately needed, after spending the past year in their heads instead of their hearts.

While listening to Flood, it’s clear that Hippo Campus didn’t linger in the doorway of those goals. Through soft, gentle strums punctuated by vibrant and blunt lyrics about paranoia, anxiety, panic attacks, they face the overarching need to change head-on. The four members—singer Jake Luppen, guitarist Nathan Stocker, bassist Zach Sutton and drummer Whistler Allen—introduced sobriety, group therapy and straightforward, verbal communication into their musical process, the result of which became a warm, catchy and soothing collection of self-reflective insights.

On the songs of Flood, Hippo Campus are adamant about embracing their identity as musicians, after years of facing a self-imposed belief that they had to sound a certain way while trying to live up to impossible expectations. On previous efforts, they felt constricted—like they were placing themselves in boxes that their sound simply cannot fit in. “The last four years brought a lot of serious tones to how we approached songwriting and communicating with each other,” says Stocker. “All these factors created a high pressure scenario, even though we had a lot of time on our hands and not a whole lot of outside pressure to make something great. It was very internalized and from within, that we put on ourselves to make something that we were proud of. We spent a lot of time second guessing and re-recording the songs you know multiple times over, and coming up empty handed in terms of a cohesive track list and vibe.”

Looking back at Wasteland, Hippo Campus’ EP release from 2023—which was originally going to be a part of this album—the band felt like it was more of a rushed deal than a genuine expressive project. “It was like, ‘You guys need to promote this tour and the Red Rocks Show, so it’d be great if we had music to go along with it,’ and we were like, ‘God damn it, why?’” Stocker laughs. He and his bandmates got wrapped up in the business and algorithmic side of it all, wanting to play into the recent country motif that was beginning to creep into indie spaces.

But Flood backtracks from that, as the band became less afraid of pushing boundaries and no longer wanted to self-edit their authentic sound. “The first thing that we reach for when we’re writing songs is an acoustic guitar,” Stocker explains. “We wanted to replicate that simplicity in a way that was easily accessible, something that people could resonate with.” Hippo Campus purposely stopped themselves from using niche instruments and flavors, such as the jazzy horn and trumpet section touring band member DeCarlo Jackson would usually supply, to ensure that whatever stray twangs came out were earnest, natural and honest. It’s why Flood is a stripped-down bout of self-reflection and sophistication, told by a band reckoning with themselves and maturing on tape.

The band doesn’t view all of their projects in the way they do Wasteland. At an afterparty gig following their appearance at Lollapalooza in Chicago in August, they did a deep dive through their catalog, playing songs from older albums and EPs—such as 2018’s effervescent and subtle Bambi and even their sunny, ambitious debut record, Landmark. “I think the older we get, the more fun it is to return to some of that stuff because it almost feels like a different band,” says Luppen. “We could find new spaces in approaching those songs live knowing what we know now. I think what we’ve learned allows us to look back with a bigger perspective and appreciate where we came from.”

The closed-off and intimate recording process of Flood forced the band to come to terms with their roots, as the four musicians wrote and tracked in the same quarters—a return to form, sort of. Alcohol abuse and the death of a close friend shrouded the rollout of their previous album, 2022’s LP3, and the group knew that a lot of hard yet necessary conversations needed to happen—so that they could not only rebuild the foundations of their relationship as a band, but as lifelong partners as well. “With a lot of childhood friends, that dynamic you first establish is really difficult to change,” Luppen reflects. “We’ve all known each other since we were 14, so there’s plenty of moments when we get into high school Hippo Campus mode with each other, because that’s what we’ve known, that’s what’s natural. It doesn’t always work the best when we’ve all changed so dramatically.” “Those ambitions that we have now don’t line up with the ambitions of yesteryear,” adds Stocker. “Our old selves claw at our new selves to give them some attention. It creates some spicy dynamics at times.”

Together, through attending the group therapy sessions and cleaning up their act, Hippo Campus surrendered to the music and completely refreshed their process. The jamming felt natural again, and the four lifelong friends, together, embraced the power of their wordless bond that comes with the love of creating music. Flood is reflective of their familial identity: a love of ‘70s and ‘80s folk acts, which blends seamlessly with Stocker’s southern background and Luppen’s Missouri roots. “My mom has a Midwestern accent; it’s in the DNA,” he jokes.

Flood is a bare and direct vessel, containing the songs that Hippo Campus have been trying to write for most of their career. “Corduroy,” for example, captures a vibrant and gentle intimacy while still possessing the same folky essence of earlier songs like “Simple Season” and “warm glow.” Additionally, “Closer” is candid and sincere, existing in the strange purgatory between the past and the present. “I know we’re getting older but I miss the way it was,” Luppen sings; There were times while recording the album where he was taken aback by the sheer unguardedness in his own voice coming out of the speakers. “Sometimes it’s hard to listen to because it’s so vulnerable hearing myself being that direct and unaffected,” he says. “It’s like taking a naked picture of yourself in a fully lit room.”

“That was Caleb’s mission too, to hold up this mirror and be like, ‘Look at yourself. Look at this. This is you, and you’re not anything else. Learn to love this,’” Luppen continues. “That’s been the mantra for the record. That’s why the whole time we’re talking about, ‘feel it, feel everything at once.’ I’m speaking out loud about what I should be doing, because I feel very uncomfortable.”

With the anticipation of Flood’s release growing larger, the band had to reconsider their relationship with the internet’s reception to their music. “I think we used to be so invested in the web’s response, but we realized that that’s a pretty shallow relationship and pretty much self made, in the echo chamber of your own brain,” Stocker says. Luppen laughs and agrees, adding how he doesn’t even “check that shit” anymore, and how he will be offline once the album drops until further notice. “There’s just no reason to do it,” he adds. After all, if they themselves no longer want to be critical of their own sound, what’s the point of paying mind to the oftentimes incoherent noise of others?

After taking the six months in between recording and releasing Flood to reflect, Hippo Campus are ready to start developing their live shows again—learning how to blend the new with the old, now that they have a pretty substantial catalog to draw from. They are preparing to do the same with their personal relationships as well, taking the lessons they’ve gathered from a cathartic recording process and maintaining the well-being and respect that comes with tending to a long-term relationship with kindness and patience.

“The cool thing about being in a band is that one person falls, the other three are there to pick that person up,” Stocker says. “I think that that sort of community, family, marriage—there’s a bunch of words for it—is the forefront of this thing, and everything that follows is extra. As long as we can maintain the goodness of our friendships and our creative relationships, everything else falls into place.”