On tour for their much-anticipated album, ‘Heartbreak Rules’, Horse Jumper of Love dive between silences soft enough to swallow and noise that breaks like bones. The venue is dimly lit, but the fairy lights lean and ache towards them. It’s a room – and an audience – utterly infatuated with one of the best-kept cult classics of modern alternative.
They begin with ‘Airport’, and it’s a bass-heavy promise of what’s to come. They almost drown themselves in droning instrumentals. It’s the sound of an attack in slow motion, and it’s coming from the inside.
Crashing cymbals, yowling growls, a shout that sounds without a voice box. Picture the love child of Wunderhorse, Modern Baseball, or Car Seat Headrest taking their first trip down lover’s walk. The only thing waiting to meet them, cigarette in hand, is the first taste of heartbreak, but it’s exactly this that make Horse Jumper such a pathetically easy band to fixate on. They learn nothing, they gain nothing, but they see it all.
On ‘Dirt’ – one of many songs played from their best-loved, self-titled debut – they bring about a crashing, almost totemic sense of fatality. For ‘Bagel Breath’ the band pursue a kind of white tee arrogance; it’s an American attitude from people who know exactly what they’re doing. Horse Jumper have, after all, been kicking up dust since the early twenty-tens. They’re well shod in their own experience.
For dessert, Horse Jumper savour the taste of ‘Orange Peeler’ and ‘Ugly Brunette’. Songs near-perfect in their incompletion, they read like unsent letters, or apologies never voiced aloud. They hang in the air long after the crowd fumble their way out into the night-time.
📝 @katejeffrie
📸: TBC
Kate Jeffrie @katejeffrie
Role: Lead Writer / Interviewer
I review gigs, and interview bands and musicians.
Available For: Gig Reviews, band interviews
Qualification: I study English Literature at the University of Bristol.
First attended gig: The first gig I remember going to see was Lewis Watson when I was 13, at a pub a few towns over from where I lived. My friends and I all loved him, and I remember how shocked I was that someone I had on this pedestal could be stood on a stage just a few feet away, drinking a beer and playing guitar!
First gig reviewed: The first gig I ever reviewed was Palace at the O2 Academy Bristol. As a band I wasn’t particularly well acquainted with, it was a testament to how live music can bowl someone over, even when it’s coming from strangers.
Dream gig: My dad saw The Smiths on their first tour, and since they’re my favourite band, I think seeing them in an intimate venue would be a dream
