LUPIN

Vinyl LP pressing. Lupin is the sound of an arrival. Across eight tracks of subverted, expansive pop, Jake Luppen's solo debut is all sharp edges, a fractured self-portrait pieced together through left-of-center, pop maximalism. Although Luppen rose to prominence as a vocalist and guitarist in St. Paul's beloved indie outfit Hippo Campus, the songs on Lupin feel like meeting him for the first time. He puts it succinctly: 'With this record I wanted to get to the point, and say how things were, as opposed to dancing around them'. Featuring synth and programming contributions from Jim-E Stack and Buddy Ross, the album weaves together fragmented drum loops, swooning falsetto, tangles of synths, and sharp guitar-lines, the final product is an off-kilter pop-sheen, one Luppen said was guided more by intuition and feeling than anything else.'