We’re going to meet a musician from Minnesota now. Indie band Hippo Campus released its fourth studio album, Flood, in September. It was recorded in just 10 days for the band’s new label, Psychic Hotline. And it came together as the group scrapped more than 100 songs. The album harbors a different feeling than previous albums and singles. But its melodies will be familiar to fans who have been following Hippo Campus since its 2017 debut. I spoke with lead guitarist Nathan Stocker ahead of the band’s show at Empire Live in Albany on February 8th.
So far so good. This marks our 10th year of touring, officially and that, I guess, where have the years gone? It's crazy. We're grateful to be able to still do it and do it with people we love. I think at this juncture, socially, it feels like live music matters more than it has in recent years. And yeah, I think for us, we're just we're just trying to be as present as possible and really provide a form of escapism. You know, there's just a lot of stuff going on, especially in America. So, yeah, we're grateful to be out here, grateful people are showing up.
So, what has changed over the last 10 years now that you're, you know, sitting back and reflecting on that?
Loads. I mean, on an individual basis. I think we've all gone through various metamorphoses over the last 10 years. You know, I'm in my 30s now, and it's a lot. It's a lot easier to sort of look back on each day and go, ‘Yeah, I justified my existence.’ I think try to be a good person instead of just kind of, you know, serving myself throughout the day. It's nice to be able to be able to confidently say that none of these matters unless we're doing it together. And I think in the early days, it was a little more looking out for number one, life is more beautiful in a lot of ways. To be able to be present for it, and not just coping with the existential dread of any given moment. And it's just we’re grateful to be out here. So, you know, it's just a wild ride. You just got to hang on.
So, Flood came out in September, and I saw on Instagram that in two years, the band had written 120 songs, and it was whittled down to 13. What was the selection process like for that?
Pretty brutal full disclosure, being in a band is not the easiest thing, especially when you're writing as many songs as we did during that time. It’s never easy saying goodbye or voting certain songs off the island. I think the beauty of the thing comes from that process, but it is absolutely the most difficult part. I think. So, I think going forward from here, we're sort of trying to do the exact opposite. And quality over quantity, I think a lot of a lot more pre-production for the next record, and a lot more of playing for keeps right out the gate, instead of just amassing this suspicious pile of over 100 songs that at a certain point you can't tell if they're good or absolute garbage.
Will we see any of those 107 songs that didn't get picked somewhere else?
I reckon. You know, if you come out on this leg of the tour, at least we might play one two. There are always more opportunities popping up every other day. Where we're kind of like, yeah, ‘Sure, put it on that, drop it with that,’ let the people do what they will with it and relinquish control. And yeah. But it is. It is a staggering amount of songs to sift through. So, I think, I think for the most part, we're all kind of more interested in starting fresh, but got to feed the algorithm. She's trying to stay relevant.
So, when the album came out, I was leaving a Noah Kahan show, and I listened to the entirety of it on the way home several times, and I think it's a bit of a slowdown from previous albums. Maybe you don't feel the same way, maybe you do. I think some previous albums were a bit more poppy, or Bambi played with Beats more. I think ‘Closer’ is probably my favorite off of this album. But what's yours and why?
First, I must say thank you to you know, following up Noah Kahan with two full spins of Flood. I mean, that's best way to end my night. High praise. I appreciate that. My favorite off the record, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough. I I've enjoyed playing ‘Madman’ live. I think ‘Flood’ goes pretty hard live as well. I don't remember the last time I listened to the record. Overall, I've listened to it maybe less than five times total. I think that there's a big emphasis for me, at least, to get the songs out, write the songs, record them, and that's it. That's all my job requires, really, you know, let the let everything else kind of just fall into place and move on to the next thing, which is just playing the songs live and paying attention to that energy specifically. So, I guess right now, ‘Madman’ and ‘Flood’ and flood are pretty up there, but ‘Closer’ is absolutely devastating for me. And yeah, that's a hard one to sort of conjure out of the blue on stage, but I appreciate that. Thanks for listening.
Oh yeah, of course, been a fan for a long time. So, it came naturally. You started releasing EPs in 2013 with the first album being Landmark a few years later, I feel like everyone I know who listens to, you know, indie pop, whatever they know ‘Way it Goes’ or ‘Simple Season.’ You know, those are some of your most popular songs. How do you feel about those songs now that the time has passed and you've released work that is more relevant to who you guys are now?
It's a great question. Cool, yeah, great question. I think my feelings on those songs are sort of secondary to, the sort of like I try to remove my personal feelings because you're playing, you're probably playing ‘Way it Goes’ every night. You know, we haven't played ‘Simple Season’ in a long time. But like, you know, way it goes ‘Buttercup’, like ‘South,’ any of those higher streaming tunes, there's a sort of hurdle that we have to figure out how to cross, a bridge that we have to cross every night. Like, how do we feel good playing these songs while also, like, Yeah, you can't get too burnt out on them, because you kind of got to give the people what they want. It's a classic, classic problem. But I think that my feelings on them, it's a weird thing. I kind of just look at them from afar and go, yeah, hey, I appreciate you. Thanks for what you've done. And you know, there's, there are so many multitudes of myself within, within those songs that have existed over the years, between live, you know, playing them so many times live, and just rinsing them to death, I think that there's a separation that has to happen if you want it to stay fresh and you and you don't want to absolutely lose your mind. It sounds like I'm tearing those songs down, but I I'm really not. I am appreciative of people listening to them and really catching on, but it's a difficult, difficult puzzle to solve every night, trying to keep them fresh and fun to play. Because most of the time, it's just like, ‘God, I was, I was 18 when we wrote this one.’ You know, it's a far jump from 30,
And you guys still have a few months left. Like I said, you just started the second leg, back up. And Flood just came out in September, so way less than a year ago, really just a few months ago, and you said, you guys want to, you know, focus a little more on pre-production, writing less, but, you know, more quality over quantity. So, I guess, what are you guys looking at next?
Well, I don't know how much I'm allowed to say.
That's fair.
I think we're gonna go back into the studio soon, and kind of play, I don't know, kind of shooting from the hip. You know, there's kind of always an element of that whenever we're in, we're in the studio, but I think we're just focused on the joy of playing together and not overthinking our reactionary instincts and letting our musical tendencies, sort of guide the way. It's just kind of keeping a finger on the pulse and not being too precious with it going forward. So, yeah, we've got studio plans. Hoping to have new music before the end of the year, frankly. So, I'm excited. I think we're I think we're all excited.
And on a separate note, I'm not sure if I can ask you about this, but I'm going to ask it and you can answer it or not. You have an independent artist project, BrotherKenzie. How do you balance the two and where do the visions differ with that?
Great question, do I balance the two? How do the visions? You know, I've always looked at BrotherKenzie as the most distilled extension of myself, so I'm not really hyper aware or overly precious about where that project goes, because I have this feeling that it'll just always be here, because as long as I'm here, it will also be sort of thing. Wherever I go, there it is. That being said, a lot of the music that I write kind of goes through the Hippocampus filter first, and whatever doesn't stick there, you know, then then goes through the BrotherKenzie filter, and is kind of like, okay, yeah, it could, it could have a home on this album, this EP, this project, or just as a single. It is difficult, though it's tough. Sometimes a song comes out and it feels so clearly, Hippocampus, but then I'll bring it to the band, and we'll try shedding it and it becomes even clearer that it's absolutely not a Hippocampus song. So, it really requires a full sort of diagnosis per song, song by song, case by case. So, I think moving forward with the BrotherKenzie project, I'm… actually wrote and recorded a full record exactly a year ago, and I’ve just been sitting on it and trying to figure out what to do with it, and I'm still not really sure. I think I might just shelf it and start over. It's kind of one of those things where it's nice that there are no rules, but it's also like I could use some parameters, sometimes. Some limitations, just to finish something or get something out. But I don't know if I answered your question at all, but hey, I appreciate you asking that, because, yeah, maybe I should think about this more. It's a difficult process. But I'm also not stressing it too hard.
I've been speaking with Nathan stocker, guitarist for Hippocampus, who will perform at Albany's Empire live on February 8th at 8pm.
