HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE

Horse Jumper of Love thrive on patient and pounding songs. Since 2013, the Boston trio, consisting of singer and guitarist Dimitri Giannopoulos, bassist John Margaris and drummer James Doran, have slowly pushed the boundaries of indie rock across five LPs.

Thanks to Giannopoulos' impressionistic lyrics and the way the arrangements range from delicate to hard-hitting, their music unleashes a poignant emotional intensity. Disaster Trick, the band's new album, out August 16th via Run For Cover, is their most direct and uncompromising to date. The 11 songs deal with themes of self-destruction and healing with harrowing clarity. While the band's last LP, 2023's Heartbreak Rules, was characterized by quiet, stripped-down songwriting, Disaster Trick turns up the volume and features some of the most expansive arrangements in the band's catalog. Recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, North Carolina, with producer Alex Farrar, the recordings shine with searing guitars and a thundering rhythm section.

"On the last album, I tried the quiet thing and realized there are definitely two parts of me: I like really heavy music and I like really mellow music," says Giannopoulos. "The two albums I listened to the most when we were in the studio were Leonard Cohen's Songs From a Room and Hum's Downward is Heavenward." Disaster Trick is a dark album, but it's never gloomy. There's a glimmer of hope and humor in these 11 songs, written with the grace that only time and growing up can bring. As he sings in "Death Spiral": "I know it sounds dramatic / But I have to describe / How it felt."

There's catharsis when it's most needed. "This album is a reflection on destructive behavior from an angle of greater clarity," says Giannopoulos. "A lot of the songs were written at a point where things were going well in my life, but I couldn't accept it. I was a brat. With 'Disaster Trick,' I cleaned up my act a little bit and thought about it."