Camp Cope
Running with the Hurricane
POISON CITY/RUN FOR COVER
ABOVE THE CURRENT
The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron is a wing of the United States Air Force charged with flying directly into storms to gather weather data, earning its planes the nickname “Hurricane Hunters.” Since forming in 2015, Camp Cope have taken a remarkably similar approach. Rather than measuring barometric pressure, though, Melbourne’s self-proclaimed “power emo” trio uses its music to confront a hurricane of misogyny and discrimination that blights their scene and abuses its participants. While performing their riot grrrl–charged single “The Opener” at Australia’s Falls Festival in 2018, they changed the song’s lyrics to call out the organizers for booking a male-dominated line-up. Not only that—they founded the #ItTakesOne campaign, aimed at eradicating sexual harassment at live shows.
But if I’ve learned anything from Queer Eye, it’s that even the most impassioned campaigners need time for themselves. Running with the Hurricane takes place after the winds have placated. Broken trees and detritus still litter the streets—in other words, there’s still work to be done in ameliorating the industry’s systemic failings—but the advocates have headed home to reflect on their hard work. “The world’s ending, we’ve all got jobs, we’re all doing our bit to keep the world turning in a special and different way, and this is just a little treat,” band leader Georgia Maq explained in a press release. Hurricane is just that: a little treat—for both its listeners and its creators.
While Camp’s politically forthright sophomore effort was defined by its penetrating admonishments, Hurricane is contemplative and peaceful. This is unsurprising, considering it took four years for the album to materialize, during which time Maq worked as a nurse issuing COVID vaccines. “I used to place a lot of importance on music—I was like, ‘this is the most important thing in the world,’” she recently told NME. “And then the pandemic happened, and my focus completely shifted.” Lead single “Blue” is emblematic of this focus shift, as Maq permits herself to look inward. “Sat in my car ’til the song stopped playing / See I’m blue with or without you, baby,” she shivers over milky open chords, landing on the inevitable realization that our sadness is attached to ourselves alone. Interrogations of love and relationships spread across the album, and vacillate between stoic self-assurance and unabashed servility. On “Caroline,” Maq tells herself, “I know there is love that doesn’t have to do / Anything that you don’t want it to do.” Meanwhile, “Jealous” finds her admitting that she begrudges an ex-lover’s pet (“You’re never in the wrong / I’m so jealous of your dog / Still got my collar on”).
On the album’s title track, Camp Cope channel Crooked Rain’s summer-bummer strums into one of their most affecting songs, driven by a lethargic, sun-kissed determination and “bass princess” Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich’s inventive counterlines, which plink away like a supportive friend. They embrace their country music proclivities wholeheartedly on this record—from the emotive waltz “One Wink at a Time” to the sparse piano closer “Sing Your Heart Out”—edging closer in style to their gold-sounding muses Waxahatchee and Courtney Barnett (the latter is a guest guitarist on the album’s first and final tracks, and both have cited the influence of Stephen Malkmus’ music). Unlike those one-woman bands, though, Camp Cope are veritably an ensemble, evidenced by the album’s cover photo in which the three women stand out in the open under baleful clouds, literalizing their storm-chasing pursuits.
Just as Sleater-Kinney made The Hot Rock in order to reorient themselves and catch a breath after the Dig Me Out fallout, this camp of new wave rioters use their latest LP to heal storm scars, allowing themselves a less purposeful indulgence that nevertheless resonates with the same immediacy, as if they had their melioristic fingers jabbed right in the enemy’s face. Maq says it best on “The Mountain”: “Now I pull the sound around me and I sing myself to sleep / You’ll see how gentle I can be.” We see it and hear it. And once Running with the Hurricane’s solicitous power envelops you, it’ll clear the debris and prepare you to re-enter the storm.
