Ahead of their fourth studio album Disaster Trick out later this Friday, Horse Jumper of Love walks along the steepest edge of limerence with their latest single, “Word” via Run For Cover Records. Consisting of vocalist and guitarist Dimitri Giannopoulos, bassist John Margaris, and drummer James Doran, the Boston-made, NY-based trio, wades in between a detached observation and surreal intuition treating their slowcore sentiments like a quiet confession.   

Within “Word,” unfiltered strings meet a gentle introspection, carrying the close sincerity of a hallucinatory stupor of love. Dimitri shares, “I was trying to tap into this feeling of two lovers in the story and their world and other people's perspectives on reality because love is so powerful and distorting.” A quiet hum, a singular strum, and a minimal beat are revealed slowly as if to isolate you alone. Plainspoken but deceivingly unearthly, we are allowed to meander through the space in between sentences, letting thoughts of what ifs seep through nimbly paced breaths.

Simple and tactile, yet layered with meaning, the song opens with, “Last night we had a fight / You blamed it on the moon / But that’s not very fair to the moon.” These words serve almost as a cosmic blame, rather than an act of accountability. With “Word,” there’s this desire to believe that love exists beyond our control, that our actions and thoughts don’t carry the weight of consequence.  Because maybe it’s easier to condemn fate than ourselves.

As intensity fades and the breaking of promises looms, do we, as we get older, realize that maybe love just isn't enough? Is there something else missing? Or maybe love is not an answer or an ending, but a reason. He concludes, “When you're younger, love can be your whole world but then, as I'm growing older, love becomes this balm that you put on the pain of existence.” 

See below, Dimitri of Horse Jumper of Love apply this balm. 

I'm kind of curious to know, do you think of yourself as a sensitive listener? 

Maybe. On tour it’s hard being in such close quarters with everyone too–it seems like every sound bothers me after a while. That's why the noise-canceling stuff helps. I also started wearing earplugs as well, not just at the shows, but everywhere to make the volume of everything lower. I do feel a little bit sensitive to noise, which bothers me, but I also enjoy other aspects of it. It's like a weird relationship.

It seems like noise can really take you places, and sometimes that can be overwhelming.

I'll blast myself with brown noise. That kind of takes out everything. It just feels plain and blank.  And then, I'll read a book in the green room. 

I feel like you do the most quiet things in the loudest places. 

If you don't take care of yourself while you're on the road, you'll just kind of go crazy.

Do you think that music consumes you or do you have a more balanced approach? 

I think I'm pretty obsessive. I think it's kind of not balanced to a point where my friends who see therapists, who are also musicians tell me, “My therapist says I should get another hobby that isn’t music.” Once music becomes your job, it's not your hobby anymore. I feel like I do really need to find something that is not music-related at all. I've tried multiple things before. I tried getting into carving wood and electronics, and just random bullshit. I tried getting into sewing, and nothing stuck for me. I just always come back to playing guitar or working on a song.

Is there a difference now in making music to be consumed? 

It's not super different. I think I feel lucky in that I haven't let it change my approach to songwriting. Music is definitely my full-time thing right now, but I live in New York. It's expensive, and I still need to do other stuff when I can. Right now, I'm lucky that music is my full-time thing, but I think if I didn't have tours, I wouldn't be making any money off music so I would need to get a normal job. But no, I still feel like I have a pretty similar approach to songwriting and music-making that I did when I was younger when I was doing it purely for fun. Because it is still really fun. When I complete a song, it feels like a cool challenge or like a puzzle that I finished. Basically, to make a song, I go through the voice memos on my phone and the notes app and I try to combine things and see how they fit.

I want to talk about “Word.” I do think it's one of your most direct yet surreal, and definitely vulnerable songs off Disaster Trick. Can you walk me through the world you creating within this track?

It started out as a literal thing where I was having a fight with someone. I’m not super into astrology stuff, but I understand where it comes from. The person who I was arguing with was like, “We're arguing because this planet is here.” And I guess I interpreted that as blaming it on the moon. 

So it started off with that, but then I was trying to capture the feeling of lovers building this bubble around themselves where they’re just in their own ecosystem, and only that other person matters. It feels unhealthy and surreal. But that's not true all the time. I was trying to tap into this feeling of two lovers in the story and their world and other people's perspectives on reality because love is so powerful and distorting. 

There's a lyric about milking the ax handle in which I was trying to think of a surreal image that could only exist in a made-up world. I watched this movie called, Häxan. It's a really old Danish documentary about witchcraft. They showed a painting that was a still of a woman who looked like she was milking a cow, but the cow was actually a giant ax, so I took that image and put it in the song as a surreal thing that these lovers can make up in their world. 

At the end of the song, there's this statement: “Our world is beyond this world.” It's this selfish thing that a lover would say to another lover. That's what I was trying to get at with this song, the distortion of reality that can be caused by being so loved.

Do you think that this bubble that you created for the lovers in this song is a sustainable world for them?

No, I think as I've gotten older, I've had a more negative perspective on this thing. I think it was a lot more romantic growing up, and now I feel like there's more to it than that. There are needs beyond this world of distorted reality. There has to be compromise and there has to be constant adjusting. That world is good for the beginning or for a short amount of time, but as two people grow together, you have to break down that wall that separates your love from the rest of the world.

Do you think as we get older, we realize that maybe love just isn't enough?

I think so, but there's also the opposite perspective, that if you have nothing but love, you could be doing pretty good. That love is so powerful, it can be better than anything else. I'd rather have love and family than money and things. 

I guess like as you become older, there's all these logistical things in life that sometimes feel like they take the place of like being super romantic, just trying to survive in like this world, this brutal world of capitalism and chaos and fucking dark shit. When you're younger, love can be your whole world but then, as I'm growing older, love becomes this balm that you put on the pain of existence. That’s mostly the inspiration behind that song, and I think a few other ones in the album as well, but that one was the main song about that feeling. 

How does “Word” play into the storytelling of your upcoming album, Disaster Trick? 

That one feels like the most intimate song to me on the album. For me right now, I'm still trying to figure out the story that the album is trying to tell. For me, I record a song and I look back on it, and it's weird because it doesn't feel like I did it. It's like this weird disassociated state that you're in when you write a song and you finish it and then you wake up the next day and you're like: ‘What was I trying to tell myself?’ ‘What was my subconscious trying to tell myself?’ Once all those songs come together, there's another layer of the puzzle where I'm like, ‘What am I going through in my life right now that caused these songs to happen?’

When I look back on this album or think about it, one of the main themes is the paranoia of not feeling present in your own life or something. I think that's something I was going through a lot. I went through a bit of a chaotic part, a chaotic period in my life. And then I came out of it being like, “Oh shit, I wasn't there. I was somewhere else.” And I wish I was because a lot of beautiful things happened and I feel like I didn't appreciate them while they were happening. Looking back now I feel bad about it. And you can only take that message and try to feel more present going forward. I think that just comes out of, I don't know, just straight up like depression or something. 

It almost feels like your music knows first like your unconscious or shadow is speaking to you. 

Yeah, it rocks. I love it. And that's why I love this because it teaches me so much about myself.  

Do you like talking about music or do you think it kind of defeats the purpose of making music because you have to re-explain when maybe a song speaks for itself? 

No, I actually really like talking about music. I enjoy talking about music because I feel like, the more I talk about it too, the more I understand it. Music is like this cool spell or something, no one really gets it but it makes us feel good, or it makes us feel sad, or whatever. It's just such a weird thing to me. But I like talking about it, and I hope that through talking about it, it inspires other people to make music or make any kind of art, because I think that's so important to being a human and just creating.  

What do you hope listeners take home with them?

Honestly, anything. Whatever their perspective is on it, I hope they do just take something from it. I kind of hope people see it and even if they don't like the music or they don't like my voice or the content, maybe they can appreciate that we're going on stage and trying to be vulnerable and trying to expose our feelings to people. It does feel nerve-wracking to do that in front of a room with hundreds of people. So I hope it inspires other people to be open in front of others and say whatever they want to say because it can be kind of helpful. You never know who will relate to you and who will take some kind of inspiration away.  

Sometimes performing at a show like that, I do want it to be extra punishing. I do like performing slow, soft songs in front of an audience that is like not gonna fuck with it. Maybe it's self-hatred or something. I just want people to talk all over the songs or whatever. But it feels great when you do a quiet song and the whole room is quiet too. 

Are you vulnerable and direct outside of music as well? 

I think it depends. Music is definitely the place where I allow the most vulnerability. We're all going through life putting up a front with the personalities we show to people. And since I was in high school playing in bands, music is a place where I've always allowed myself to do and say whatever I want, whether that's super vulnerable or super cringe. I think I discovered at some point that I'm pretty good at being honest with people. Growing up, my sister always used to say I had no social filter, but it was just because I saw no point in not being honest with people. I think that's why I got into music, because it seemed like the perfect outlet for myself to be honest with how I'm feeling.

And lastly, with the consistent world building and world ending in life–how do you keep your heart open? 

I guess honesty is the best way to do it, staying open with people. Also just listening to everyone no matter what they have to say and being curious. 

You can find dates and tickets to Horse Jumper of Love's Fall Tour here.