With five full-length releases under their belt since their eponymous 2017 debut, including last year’s mini album Heartbreak Rules, Horse Jumper of Love have returned with Disaster Trick, an upscaled production and momentum pointed toward an evolved sound: depleted yet sobering slowcore. Horse Jumper of Love’s internal voice is glaringly clear and frustrated, as it carries the listener throughout, working in iterations through its own self-destructive tendencies and, therefore, healing the songs from the inside out. The stark emotional work is a personalized “creative reset,” a motion representing clarity and inducing an artistic catharsis for frontman Dimitri Giannopoulos.
The three-piece—John Margaris, James Doran and Giannopoulos—are not alone on Disaster Trick. Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman and Jake Lenderman make cameos, as does Squirrel Flower’s Ella Williams. Together, they all help the record flow through tough and dreary soundscapes. Often, in a counter swoop, the flow-state of Horse Jumper of Love albums have colorful, animated life running throughout. Disaster Trick feels different, likely because it was written in a new context: Giannopoulos was completely sober during the album-making process, an exercise where he returned to older works that date back over a decade and tended to mistakes with compassion and understanding, implemented not only in refining the music itself, but in Horse Jumper of Love’s reckoning with these long-passed pockets of time.
As the first notes unravel on “Snow Angel,” the listener is immediately brought into a declarative, tangible world, a space where Giannopoulos’s insistent attitude lingers but becomes polished over. Williams’s vocals contrast with Giannopoulos’s, as they sing provocatively about grief: “It feels evil in the dark / The minutes of your life / Love’s been sleeping in my mirror / I just want to be alone in it.” On “Wink,” Hartzman provides delicate harmonies to a crushing arrangement. It’s some of the most textured work in the Horse Jumper of Love catalog. As Disaster Trick goes on, tracks like “Word” and “Wait by the Stairs” impress with simplistic beauty lathered in intentional production—indicative of a larger budget than previous Horse Jumper of Love works, and perhaps a whisper toward the band’s future trajectory.
But here, presently, they take the opportunity to indulge in their identity. Giannopoulos reveals himself on “Nude Descending” and “Lip Reader” with consistently raw and obtrusive lyrics that reek of youth and honest but painful self-interrogation—the latter’s narrator asking the listener, or maybe himself: “Remember they beat in baptism / Remember who chose to forget / The clock clicks on love turned domestic / What creature wouldn’t bite back?” Whether it be translated through blunt lyrics, or through its emotional decompression and muddy guitar melodies, Disaster Trick utters acceptance and confessions of self-destruction. The album, and Horse Jumper of Love, accepts that too. It’s an eternally loving project.
At any point where the album starts to feel repetitive or boring, it shakes you awake and shows you what’s purposeful. Disaster Trick is unafraid to relish in the mundane and trust that you’ll understand; its lyrics keep you busy and create a fair fight for balance. And in all the record’s cruelty, Horse Jumper of Love find the time to make you laugh. Disaster Trick is rich in spiritual references regarding Heaven and existential ideals, all told with an amusing edge—notably in “Today’s Iconoclasts,” where Giannopoulos bursts about giving “blood to our fantasies, we play fuck, kill, marry” and balancing sobriety (“A fresh addiction comes with the discipline”) and humor (“Hate’s the noise of sorrow, I read it in the Amazon Basics Bible”) to persuade itself through hard times. Disaster Trick argues with itself, and it wins.
