A little while ago, stellar indie five-piece Hippo Campus made their return to the UK capital for a special one-off show to celebrate the release of their magnetic fourth full-length record ‘Flood’. Two and a half years after their last show, the band touched down at London’s iconic O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire for their biggest UK concert to date, wowing the excited crowd with an eclectic setlist filled with well-known bangers and the biggest hits from their latest LP.
The American group – made up of lead singer and guitarist Jake Luppen, lead guitarist Nathan Stocker, drummer Whistler Allen, bassist Zach Sutton and trumpeter DeCarlo Jackson, plus touring keyboard player Samuel Calvo – had just completed their Asian tour before their stop in London as part of their ‘Flood Tour’ which is set to continue in the US early next year and will hopefully also be featuring another couple of gigs in the UK and Europe. Opening to a cloud of smoke on stage and an eager audience leaning over the barriers to get a glimpse of the long-awaited musicians, it’s the addictive beats of ‘Bad Dream Baby’ that offer a first taste for what is to come during the next two hours of pure live music ecstasy. The set then continues to morph into a ping pong match between the Minnesotan’s latest record and the far more experimental 2022 release ‘LP3’, with ‘Paranoid’, ‘Tooth Fairy’, ‘Ride or Die’ and ‘Bang Bang’ bouncing off each other.
While the songwriting of ‘Flood’ and its songs shine thanks to its straightforward and no-frills style that marks it as the alt-band’s most personal and cathartic project yet, it is those high-energy moments as well as familiar old cuts that get the dedicated crowd into an enraptured frenzy. Often, singer Luppen’s voice is turned into a glitchy, high-pitched brilliance, while guitarist Stocker commands the stage with multiple solos and tracks like ‘Where To Now?’ and ‘Deepfake’ that have him take the spotlight as the frontman for a couple of divine moments.
This is also where Hippo Campus truly stand out and cement their spot as one of the greatest bands of our generation – they are all equally involved, play their instruments to the tee and bring a level of excellence to the table that comes from both having been in this band for eleven years but also working on their own solo projects on the side. In short, they absolutely know what they’re doing and every minute of their set is proof of that. The theatre-like stage is enveloped in blue light beams reflecting off a disco ball for the dreamy ‘Boys’, the country-ladden ‘Yippie Ki Yay’ brings the night to a new charge, and cinematic ‘Everything At Once’ stars as the much-loved first release of ‘Flood’, while the gut-wrenchingly beautiful ‘Monsoon’ takes it all back to the Saint Paul-born quintet’s very beginnings (and causes the one or other tear to be shed).
As the show draws to a close with the fan-favourite classics ‘South’, ‘Poems’, and the final ‘Buttercup’, the entire room is jumping along to the songs the fans have been waiting to hear live for such a long time. The fans have grown up with them – and it shows. From start to finish, the performance is yet another pillar in Hippo Campus’ long list of concert triumphs, and we truly hope we won’t have to wait too long to experience their masterly live artistry again.
Written by Laura Weingrill // photography by Brit O’Brien
GEM Magazine 