Simple Season
Hippo Campus
"Simple Season" is the moment Landmark exhales. The tempo relaxes, the guitars trade their usual nervous filigree for warm sustained chords, and BJ Burton lets synth pads and processed textures pool underneath in a way the rest of the album mostly resists. The rhythm section stays busy but soft-handed, brushing the beat rather than striking it. Jake Luppen sings lower and more openly than usual, dropping the strained top-of-range urgency for something closer to conversational warmth, and the harmonies with Nathan Stocker sit close and unhurried. The lyric wants exactly what the title says — an uncomplicated stretch of time, a season without weather — and the song knows that wanting it is itself an admission that things aren't simple. There's a strain of Midwestern homesickness in it, the specific ache of a band from Minnesota touring away from a place whose seasons actually mark time. Within Landmark's sequence it functions as relief, the track where the album stops running. It fits a slow morning with nothing scheduled, or the drive back from a trip when you're tired in a good way and the conversation has finally run out.
medium
2010s
warm, pooling, unhurried
United States (Minneapolis)
indie pop, indie rock. dream-pop-tinged indie. wistful, content. settles into warm longing for simplicity, the wanting itself an admission things aren't simple. energy 4. medium. danceability 3. valence 6. vocals: lower register, open, conversational, close harmonies. production: warm sustained guitar chords, pooling synth pads, soft brushed drums. texture: warm, pooling, unhurried. acousticness 4. era: 2010s. United States (Minneapolis). a slow morning with nothing scheduled, or the tired drive home from a trip