MINNEAPOLIS — On the plus side, the members of Hippo Campus have been in a busy, flourishing rock band since the last of them graduated from high school in St. Paul eight years ago.
On the downside, though: They've been in a busy, flourishing rock band since they graduated from high school.
"Being friends for so long and being around each other so much," guitarist Nathan Stocker said, "there was naturally some inner turmoil and conflict."
"The universe kind of planned an intervention for us," bassist Zach Sutton added.
COVID lockdown forced Hippo Campus to take a couple years off from touring. The members now say they're a stronger, wiser, happier band because of it. They also appear to be more popular than ever.
The melodic quintet landed high on both Billboard's Heatseekers and New Artist charts in February with their latest album, "LP3." They've consistently sold out venues, including such mainstays as New York City's Webster Hall and Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club.
Talking by phone from a stop in Phoenix recently, Sutton and Stockert emphasized how thrilled they are being back on the road — but also how much the band benefited from its forced break.
"We love touring and thank our lucky stars to get to do it, but 2019 was the year we just toured our faces into the ground," Stocker said.
Their years of constant road work famously began after the release of their debut EP, "Beautiful Creatures," in 2014. They headed to Austin's South by Southwest Conference — too young to imbibe in the free booze — and were recruited on the spot to play Conan O'Brien's TV show.
"We didn't really ever have a chance or window of time to sit back and think about what we'd done for the past eight years, and what we wanted to do," Stocker continued. "That all kind of built up on the road.
"So 2020 and 2021 was a lot of hard conversations with each other and ourselves. It wasn't anything too ugly or unusual. Just a lot of growing up, and getting outside our little band bubble."
Before the pandemic hit, the group had already opted to take six months off from touring starting in late 2019.
The band members set up shop in the northeast Minneapolis studio of producer BJ Burton (a recent Grammy nominee for Low's "Hey What"), working on Hippo Campus material for several months as well as a wide variety of other projects.
Some worked as producers for younger artists such as Miloe, Samia and Raffaella. They also issued solo music, including drummer Whistler Allen, Stocker (as Brotherkenzie) and singer/guitarist Jake Luppen (as Lupin). Stocker and Luppen also recorded an experimental pop LP under the band name Baby Boys with Caleb Heinz, a friend from St. Paul Conservatory for the Arts.
In part because he was an old friend, Heinz wound up being recruited to produce Hippo Campus' new album — even though the band could have landed a bigger-name record-maker.
"Caleb had been really developing as a producer behind the scenes while we spent all those years touring," Sutton said. "So between our own growing self-confidence working in the studio and Caleb's strong development, it was a pretty obvious choice."
With Burton living in Los Angeles at the time and just a friend in the studio with them, "it was kind of like the parents left the room, and we had all these toys to work with," Sutton said. "It felt really jovial."
The songs that wound up on "LP3" indeed sound sonically mischievous — sort of a melding of the tight, urgent live band heard on Hippo Campus' first couple of EPs with the more experimental and electronically addled studio band of their last album, "Landmark."
Upon closer inspection, however, the lyrics reflect the stress and personal conflict the band members were feeling from their years of hard touring.
"Everybody's running from a halo/ Everyone thinks that they're bad inside," Luppen sings with a hint of desperation in "2 Young 2 Die," the album's big-entrance opening track. "Everyone takes what they can handle/ Everyone thinks they're too young to die."
Other tracks make dark references to "barely keeping it together" (the whirry but warped pop gem "Bang Bang") and "you can see right through me" (the ultra-catchy single "Ride or Die"). In the life-as-a-marathon anthem "Semi-Pro," Luppen's play-by-play includes, "I've been bad, but I'm only getting better."
Sutton said the band members squarely focused on carving out better personal lives during their break, despite the challenges of the pandemic.
"Relationships really is the headline," the bassist said. "The majority of us found relationships that took a greater sense of priority in our lives, that became more than just long-distance relationships.
"I think it was pretty crucial that we wound up taking more time off than we had planned, and had that extra time to figure out who we are as people off the road, and extra time to be introspective."
Now that they're back on the road, they said they also have a newfound love for each other as well as the audiences they sorely missed.
"Playing shows has been such a key element to who we are as a band; it wouldn't have been nearly as rewarding to release this album before we could tour again," Stocker said.
The guitarist singled out "LP3's" slow-grooving, contemplative closing track "Understand" as one that "has come alive" on tour.
"The crowd actually breathes life into it," he said.
"It kind of feels like a face-to-face dialogue with the crowd every night. That could only happen when we hit the road again, so that's just one more reason we're happy being back."
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