by Christopher J. Lee
It’s when the yelling comes in on the song “Volcano” off So Divine from 2019 that I knew I liked Horse Jumper of Love. Whether a stolen gesture from Cloud Nothings or from elsewhere, it catches you off guard, given Horse Jumper’s mien for slowcore, ambulant pacing, and general lack of urgency as an artistic ethos. In this passing instance, Dimitri Giannopoulos identifies an emotional limit for his band. “I am not going anywhere” is the line, and Giannopoulos’s sudden, elevated delivery can be taken as a moment of honest outrage, like a person with unpredictable anger management issues, or as a feigned reaction, like a rockstar playing his predetermined role. He quickly pulls back only a few seconds later, resembling a person who has woken up from a nightmare only to fall back asleep again.
There are fewer such compositional set-ups on the minor-keyed Disaster Trick, though Giannopoulos (vocals, guitar), John Margaris (bass), and James Aloyseus-Charles Doran (drums) continue to push boundaries, both musical and emotional. This release veers more fully into earnestness, and it’s their best album as a result. As noted in the advance publicity, the LP marks a new period of sobriety for Giannopoulos, who quit drinking prior to the recording of Disaster Trick, and the album bears clear traces of this turn. The overall sound leans into a more downbeat direction with the LP somewhat concave, reaching its lowest point three quarters of the way with the track “Death Spiral” before pulling out with the (relatively) upbeat “Gates of Heaven” and the off kilter “Nude Descending,” which closes the album. Disaster Trick isn’t overly morose, but it does depict a singer-songwriter confronting his demons and sorting through uncomfortable feelings as a means of finding a way forward.
Assisting Horse Jumper of Love on this LP is Alex Farrar, who has produced MJ Lenderman, Squirrel Flower (Ella Williams), and Wednesday. The result is a thick, reverb heavy character on many of the tracks, which departs from the stripped down, acoustic aspects developed on Horse Jumper’s recent albums, Natural Part (see “Mask”) and Heartbreak Rules (e.g. “Singing by the Sink”). In some ways, the root DNA for Disaster Trick goes back to the first song, “Ugly Brunette,” on their self-titled debut from 2016. That track established a template that the band has fiddled with and at times abandoned, but it is also a deeply satisfying approach for Giannopoulos’ voice and their deliberate style of playing. In the same spirit, “Snow Angel,” which starts Disaster Trick, leaves a similarly strong impression with its briefly made acoustic strums followed by a seawall of electric guitar. In this way, it resembles the lead of “Hot Rotten Grass Smell” off Wednesday’s Rat Saw God – Karly Hartzman contributes backing vocals on Disaster Trick – and, more distantly, the unadorned drumbeats which initiate “Only Shallow” from MBV’s Loveless. In all three instances, an intentional false impression is employed to create an enlarged sense of space and volume.
The second track, “Wink,” may be the best on the album. Beginning with an inhale by Giannopoulos followed immediately by guitars, percussion, and his vocals coming in and seemingly exhaling together, it’s as if the entire song is structured around his biorhythm and mental state. It has Horse Jumper’s best features on display: an unhurried rhythmic pace, a sense of restraint with the vocal delivery, and a fullness of feeling when the chorus rushes in. Further enhancing its sound, Hartzman provides additional vocals on this track. She and Ella Williams, who appears on “Snow Angel” and “Lip Reader,” supply a much-appreciated, feminine harmonic element that distinguishes this recording from past efforts. “Today’s Iconoclast” bears similar traits with an arpeggio that arrives after a minute and a half that equally hits an emotional chord, lifting the song to a new level. This shift and others recall the approach and worldview of the Red House Painters circa Ocean Beach and Old Ramon.
With this set up, Disaster Trick ventures down the emotional spectrum with the apparent intention to hit bottom, reflecting the context of the recording, but without sacrificing versatility. “Word” goes minimalist while “Lip Reader” has a shoegaze maximalism with its intermittent guitar atmospherics. “Wait by the Stairs” combines the two techniques with lyrics that further impart the uneasiness of someone hanging on their last thread, asking for a simple favor. The lyrics on Disaster Trick mostly dwell on relationships and the limited ability people have to understand one another, let alone help. “There’s nothing I can do, I couldn’t leave it up to you,” Giannopoulos relays on “Curtain,” summarizing the sense of incapacity and ennui that inhabits much of the lingua franca of this LP. “Tell me how, tell me what good would that do? Do you think yours is the only point of view? Do you think that others haven’t done it, too?”
A critique of Disaster Trick is that it is slightly repetitive in terms of tone and message. This matter could be a track sequencing issue. A murkiness sets in midway that could use more moments of levity. That said, the album avoids any shallow catharsis by the end. The final track, “Nude Descending,” comes off as a self-deprecating aside with Giannopoulos comparing himself to Marcel Duchamp’s scandalous work, “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2).” By associating himself with this paradigm of cubist abstraction, Giannopoulos surrenders to self-criticism on this song, conceding that his behavior may have been more remote and insensitive than he understood. Disaster Trick ends with him repeating the line, “You know I can’t spend the night,” casually affronting perhaps every love song ever written, but recognizing that he still isn’t ready yet for that ultimate source of human connection.
It would be easy to say that Horse Jumper of Love is a third-generation dream pop act from Boston following the likes of Galaxie 500 (first generation) and the Drop Nineteens (second generation), but Horse Jumper has long drawn from an additional set of references, whether Mark Kozelek, Phil Elverum, or Lou Barlow (identifying Barlow’s legacy among younger musicians is a much needed project). Giannopoulos, Margaris, and Doran have clearly apprenticed with these different sounds to the extent that the band has come to occupy a space between categories, even those closely related, whether shoegaze or dreampop, through guitar tones and a backbeat that bleed and blur into one another like watercolors. Similar to their Asheville peers and others like DIIV, Horse Jumper of Love is reworking traditions rather than purely imitating them.
In skater parlance, a disaster trick is a difficult 180-degree move on the edge of a halfpipe. Horse Jumper of Love is attempting to pull off a similar maneuver with this LP. Temporarily riding the edge, they are on the cusp of transformation and going somewhere completely new.