Horse Jumper of Love
Natural Part
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Dimitri Giannopoulos is a chronicler of the mundane. Prone to fixations on the drama of humanity, the leader of Boston’s Horse Jumper of Love comes across like a benevolent alien probing society for further study. His songs—often short and possessing a strange lyrical economy—present him as a keen observer, but an unreliable narrator. Particulars are routinely left out, and the feeling is all that remains across Horse Jumper’s third LP Natural Part. In fact, the few details he does offer are often tactile and posed in the form of a question. And yet his yearning vocals and singular guitar playing ground him, adding a natural world-weariness to these inquiries.
His two bandmates meet him in lockstep, both approaching their third of the sonic equation with a curious sense of musicality. Much of what you hear from bassist John Margaris is nothing at all—his bass playing utilizes negative space in such a way that the rests have their own signature tone. A noted jazz-head, drummer Jamie Vadala-Doran employs subtle flashes of syncopation in his fills and expressions like breadcrumb trails. Impressive in their own right, there’s a calculus to these flourishes that always keeps them in service to the song. With all that intention, it’s fair to say that Horse Jumper’s best songs mean something far different to the listener on the fourth or fifth pass than they do on the first. This isn’t to say that they lack immediacy (in fact, they kicked off this album cycle with their hookiest tune yet), but the cyclical, droning nature of their songs reveals more of their personality over time.
The first sound you hear on Natural Part is Giannopoulos, unadorned. The molasses-drip “Snakeskin” uses big words and themes to ask simple questions about harm and intent. They pull the reverse card on “Ding Dong Ditch” by setting up a juvenile premise to provoke thought on aging and bodily decay. The song’s bluesy string bends and tumbling-down-the-stairs fills are a nice touch, too. This highbrow/lowbrow device is also used on two of Natural Part’s early singles. At the surface level, “I Poured Sugar in Your Shoes” scans like a breezy love song, but the sour-noted chorus pulls the rug out: Giannopoulos is spreading himself too thin and letting everyone down as a result.
“Sitting on the Porch at Night” is seemingly a song about wasting a balmy night in the city. In the spirit of The Dismemberment Plan’s “You Are Invited,” Giannopoulos sees a car speeding by full of balloons and wonders how much fun everyone else is having without him (although a quick zoom out reveals his aim might actually be set on waste and environmental collapse). Vadala-Doran and Margaris match this concern with a winding melody that, like its meta-riffing video, reflects the tension right back at him.
The record’s back half houses two of its most incisive songs in “I Put a Crown on You” and “Mask.” Both preoccupied with appearance and the meaning behind one’s actions, the ghostly anti-folk “Crown” addresses a partner of some kind directly, awarding them praise despite pushback, while the topical “Mask” either gets real pragmatic about PPE or calls out pretension with the incisive line, “Anything could be a mask if you tried.”
While this music is certainly not without forebears (the watchful eye of Silver Jews and the muted-despair-meets-jubilant-release of Duster are key entry points), Horse Jumper of Love manage to set themselves apart from their contemporaries through sheer force of personality. Few songwriters are as concise with their pen when tackling big feelings like Giannopoulos, and fewer still are backed by such distinct players as Vadala-Doran and Margaris. In their partnership lies something truly special.
