Despite many postponements, Minneapolis’ Hippo Campus were back in the UK once again to celebrate the release of the band’s third album ‘LP3’.
Last night (Monday, May 9th) the five-piece were at the packed-out Garage in Highbury, London with support from Sheffield’s Frankie Beetlestone. The singer-songwriter and his band really got the crowd psyched and roaring together with his explosive rock and pop tracks.
The crowd appeared to be hooked from the get-go as Beetlestone’s energy on stage was charismatic, it was impressive he managed to keep it up for the whole set. Tracks like ‘Sober Again’ and ‘Whore’ went down a treat and there was even some crowd participation for the final song which involved some aggressive hand waving from left to right.
Once Frankie’s set had finished there was about a 30-minute wait with the world’s shittest interlude/soundtrack that sounded like something taken from The 1975 but worse. Finally, Hippo Campus entered the stage to a humongous cheer which was a theme throughout the night.
The band started off with a couple of new numbers from their album however the electrified auto-tuned vocals made it hard to sing along to and I don’t know if the sound system could cope but it was far too loud and just became a little distorted. Jake’s voice is much better standalone as his voice is more than capable of reaching various notes.
DeCarlo Jackson on trumpet was the star of the show with his solos raised the roof as enormous cheers every time. There were also eruptions of joy as ‘Monsoon’, ‘Way It Goes’ and ‘South’ came on as the whole venue began singing along.
Moving onto the encore, the band rounded the evening off with hit singles ‘Bambi’ and ‘Buttercup’. Fan favourites, were easy to singalong to as Jake, Nathan, Zack, Whistler and DeCarlo charmfully say their goodbyes to yet another raucous roar leaving eager fans still craving for more.
