The Boston slowcore trio stitch their gentle and heavy sounds back together with a newfound clarity while considering nihilism from a more hopeful angle on their cathartic fourth album. Horse Jumper of Love are no strangers to the void. With the release of their self-titled 2016 debut, frontman Dimitri Giannopoulos confessed to having a phase where he thought “nothing was real” as a teenager, and since then, their music has always had a hint of the dissociative. Hazy interludes give way to tidal waves of sound anchored by tiny details: the “kiss” of throwing up into a trashcan on 2019’s “John Song,” a favorite shirt ruined by bleach on their breakout track “Ugly Brunette.”
For their new album “Disaster Trick”, the signature slowcore sound established on their debut is reborn. Horse Jumper’s last release, 2023’s “Heartbreak Rules” EP, stripped their work down to the bone with Giannopoulos largely on solo acoustic guitar, but the new record brings back the noise, stitching their gentle and heavy sounds back together in a cathartic return to form.
Their production process has recentered, too. Rather than “show up at a studio, drink, and record,” the newly sobre Giannopoulos says he and the band approached “Disaster Trick” with clarity, traveling to Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios to work with producer Alex Farrar. There, they were joined by the studio’s recent alums Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman of Wednesday and Ella Williams of Squirrel Flower.
It feels like Horse Jumper of Love isn’t just evolving, but considering its own nihilism from a new angle. The intoxicating sink of their earlier work is garnished with something a little more hopeful, a little more self-aware. In a way, the band is literally looking back—“Gates of Heaven,” for instance, is a previously unfinished track from years ago. But there’s a sense of determination alongside this retrospection, a pursuit of honesty and connection that shines through the darkness. “I know it sounds dramatic,” Giannopolous acknowledges at the close of “Death Spiral.” “But I must describe the way that it felt.”
Horse Jumper of Love from “Disaster Trick”, out 16th August on Run For Cover Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 