Hippo Campus takes serious turn on ‘Bambi’
Sometimes the title of an album is guaranteed to set fans’ heads spinning. Case in point: The St. Paul, Minn., pop band Hippo Campus called its second album “Bambi,” a name that’s mentioned nowhere on the album. Since the hit title song is sensitive and downcast, fans assume there’s a connection with the classic, tearjerker Disney cartoon. According to guitarist Nathan Stocker, they’re all wrong. “Bambi is the name of our singer’s (Jake Luppen’s) aunt,” he said. “And we recorded most of the album at her cabin in Wisconsin. The title song was the last one we finished for the album — it was the only one we all finished together, since we were mostly writing separately. We needed to name both the song and the album, so we did both at once — it was more of a joke than anything else. But I think the image of a mythical deer in the forest is kind of enticing. The meanings always change when people hear something and that’s the way it should be.” The title is the only joke on “Bambi,” which marks a more serious turn for the young quintet. Four members formed the group in 2013 when they were high school seniors (trumpet player DeCarlo Jackson joined later), and they had an indie hit with last year’s “Landmark,” a tuneful album with a summery feel. But they found themselves turning inward when they reconvened this year to write the followup, and the new songs called for a different sound, with slower tempos and heavier synthesizers. They even broke an indierock taboo by applying some Auto-tune to Lup- pen’s vocals. “We had a lot of latenight sessions and decided we didn’t want to base the songs around guitar riffs again, so going to synthland became really appealing,” Stocker said. “The Auto-tune was just another tool, like anything else you find in the studio. We didn’t want to box ourselves in when it came to gear.” There will be more guitars in the mix when they hit House of Blues tomorrow. “We only have five people and we don’t want to play a bunch of synths. But the songs are the songs, and if their identity is intact, then we’ve done our job.” Personal relationships were on their mind when they wrote the new songs, but so were larger issues like the MeToo movement. “We made a pretty honest attempt at processing our lives as individuals. We felt a lot of personal anxiety about maintaining relationships, so a lot of that is in the songs. We were also thinking about being young men in this very strange society, to define what it means to be a good person.”
Hippo Campus, with the Districts, at House of Blues, tomorrow. Tickets: $25-$35; livenation.com.