by Alivia Stonier (@liv.jolee)
Horse Jumper of Love has returned to the existentialism of what it means to be alive with the 10 Year Anniversary Edition of their self-titled record, originally released in 2016. A stark contrast from the millennial optimism that people are highlighting from that year, the album allowed itself to wallow in the quiet moments where it was appropriate to do so. Whether it be lingering in the quiet of cars passing by or yearning for a love that you feel you can't have, the album allowed itself to be surprisingly vulnerable for an record that is so sonically heavy.
The 10 Year Anniversary Edition, released by Run For Cover Records, captures the softer sides to the melancholy of those original studio sessions engineered by Bradford Krieger, expanding upon it by gathering thirteen archival bonus tracks recorded between 2013 and 2015. The addition shows just how much attention went into not only cultivating a sound but a specific emotional journey that was being told through the sonic landscape. In interviews reflecting on the anniversary frontman Dimitri Giannopoulos notes that revisiting the project feels like examining a raw portrait of intense youth alienation. Written when he was between 19 and 21, the album represents a distinct point of coming of age marked by dropping out of community college, moving away from home, and navigating the emotional wreckage of early heartbreak.
Tracks like "Bagel Breath" really bring together how the album began from a softer place of yearning and was then able to transform into the heavily distorted slowcore record that it became known as. This dynamic is contrasted with sharp relief and reprieve from the internal struggle being shown by including early home demos on the reissue's second disc. Much of this material was captured by Giannopoulos on a Tascam Portastudio 4-track cassette recorder, highlighting just how stripped-back and soft the music truly started out before evolving into massive, slowcore figures. This specific tape hiss filled "bedroom pop" sound was an intentional rejection of high production polish, a perfect fit for the material on the record and what it was dealing with. Experimenting with abrasive guitar, pitch imperfections, and deliberate deceleration to depict dread and love, the demos came to life.
During this era of the mid-2010s indie landscape, Horse Jumper of Love held a role in the underground DIY network. While the broader indie scene was saturated with polished synth-pop and upbeat rock pieces, they were operating in a Boston basement collective alongside bands like Vundabar, establishing a slower, heavier, counter-cultural standard. They shared thematic territory with groups like Duster and Hum, yet set themselves apart through their intensely local, house-show focus in Boston.
The expansiveness of this edition really shows how much they were setting a specific mood, especially with their entirely instrumental tracks such as "July 5th" or the heaviness of "Dirt" in its final adaptation in comparison to that of its earlier version. Listening to the newly released "Dirt (4-Track)" alongside the full album remaster exposes the foundational DNA of the track before it took on its crushing final weight. This marked difference is also shown in archival tracks like "Heather (2013)," an early mid-tempo version of what would eventually be slowed down into the beautifully harrowing "I Love You Very Much Forever."
Giannopoulos has noted that short interludes like "July 5th" were structurally vital to establishing the album's emotional blueprint, acting as complete poetic fragments that anchor the record's overall themes. The name of the band itself, pulled from an Ovid poem about an inability to casually move past a devastating heartbreak, underscores the gravity of these tracks. The lyrical themes of isolation and domestic observation are no accident but it was instead inherently a goal of the band when looking at where not only their namesake came from but what they wanted it to be known for on a self-titled project. Dimitri wrote a significant portion of these lyrics while working his day job as a museum security guard, standing for hours in contemporary art installations where books, phones, and even sitting down were strictly banned. To survive the boredom and severe disconnection, he began sneakily writing down fragmented lines on scraps of paper in the galleries, including the chorus of "Bagel Breath".
Many of the album's lyrics are built out of these misheard moments and accidental interactions, such as mishearing a lyric from local Boston peers The Devil and a Penny to write "Spaceman," or pulling "Ugly Brunette" from a misread subtitle in a Krzysztof Kieślowski film. This process perfectly captures the album's lyrical focus on the random, strange nature of memories and the weight of standing completely still while life continues to move forward without consideration for you. When you dive directly into the lyrics of these tracks, you see exactly how they weave this specific strain of mundane, everyday vulnerability into something incredibly heavy. The opening track, "Ugly Brunette," acts as a confessional framework for the rest of the record.
Being able to ground the track in such a specific memory of a bleached shirt that was accidentally lost on a family trip at 11 years old really speaks to the way Giannopoulos is able to get lost in his family dynamics, being stripped away from them to be on his own in the early stages of adulthood but being able to do so with a gentleness for the situation and for who he was as a kid.
He sings "I'll be patient with you / That's the way the garden grows and the gardener forgets,” addressing the painful reality that healing and love require a slow burning timeline that can’t be rushed. The emotional core of "Bagel Breath" expands on this intimacy, highlighting a sad yet comforting regular vulnerability acting as an emotional anchor dropped within the record that isn't afraid to also offer humor within the sadness. Then there’s "Dirt," which takes the record’s heavy minimalism to its absolute limit. The track moves with an erratic, starting and stopping rhythm that relies heavily on empty space to let the tension breathe. The lyrics are sharp but ordinary, moving from peeling an apple with fingernails to mixing dirt with juice, capturing what it feels like to be completely stuck inside a notion in your own mind while you negotiate an overwhelming sense of doom.
The album really allows itself to ask what happens when we allow our anxious selves to be consumed by our existentialism and accept the fate of doing so, while still being able to love and have moments of light within that struggle. The anniversary edition is among the more special expansions you’ll find. Not only does it add new, unreleased tracks like "Big Fat Worm,” but it shows you another side of a band that has such a distinct voice. As Horse Jumper of Love's first full length LP, the Boston band clearly showed that not only did they have a deep range, but they were able to take that and hone their vision in a way that you would never have expected if you only listened to the album in its original state.