Semi Pro

"Semi Pro" has a scrappier, more self-deprecating energy than much of Hippo Campus's catalog — a song about the particular comedy and awkwardness of trying to become something without any certainty of getting there. The guitars are more jagged here, the rhythm section more insistent, and the arrangement has a slightly ramshackle quality that feels thematically appropriate: this is music that wears its seams visibly. There's humor mixed into the emotional register, the kind of dry self-awareness that comes from watching yourself pursue something with total commitment while also understanding that the outcome is genuinely uncertain. Luppen's vocal delivery captures this tonal complexity well — there's earnestness and irony occupying the same phrases simultaneously, which is harder to pull off than it sounds. The song understands that ambition is both genuinely compelling and slightly absurd, that the gap between who you are and who you're trying to become is funny and painful in equal measure. Musically, it nods toward the post-punk and new wave influences that have always run underneath Hippo Campus's more obvious indie-pop surface — there's a nervous energy in the guitar work that recalls early Talking Heads or the more angular moments of the Strokes. You listen to this when you're in the middle of something that hasn't proven itself yet, when you're still in the part of the story before you know how it ends, and the only thing keeping you going is the suspicion that you might be able to pull it off.