Shifting away from the gnawing, emo-inflected power-pop of their first two albums, the Melbourne trio ask: Can softness be as invigorating as fury?
Camp Cope know that it is all too easy to get swept away by a storm bigger than yourself. Since emerging from Melbourne’s punk scene in 2015, the trio—composed of vocalist and guitarist Georgia Maq, bassist Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich, and drummer Sarah Thompson—have vehemently opposed the misogyny that is all too common in the music industry. “The Opener,” a breakout single from 2018’s How to Socialise & Make Friends, transformed the band’s own experiences with sexism into a defiant feminist anthem: “It’s another man telling us to book a smaller venue… Now look how far we’ve come not listening to you!” In the four years since “The Opener,” some systems have evolved while others remain frustratingly intact. But Camp Cope have changed and their third album, Running With the Hurricane, has a secret to share: There’s stability to be found within the squall.
Camp Cope started working on Running With the Hurricane in 2019, but the onset of the pandemic forced them to pause. Over the next couple years, as COVID and environmental catastrophes ravaged the planet, the bandmates refocused their priorities; Maq returned to her prior career path, nursing, and helped vaccinate fellow Australians. When the band finally began recording in 2021, they embraced the twangy lightness of the pop-country tunes that Maq turned to for comfort. Songs like the title track or “Blue” could be lost mid-2000s Chicks cuts—Australian and Southern accents alike stretch vowels like taffy. Shifting away from the gnawing, emo-inflected power-pop of their first two albums, Camp Cope ask: Can softness be as invigorating as fury?
Running With the Hurricane answers this question with a collection of songs that focus on matters of the heart and mind. “We could have gotten even angrier and even harder,” Maq told NPR. “But we didn’t. We went the opposite way because we refused to let the world harden us.” Their emotional range has broadened with them. “Now I pull the sound around me and I sing myself to sleep, you’ll see how gentle I can be,” Maq sings on “The Mountain,” one of several songs about finding a newfound peace in vulnerability. But she doesn’t pretend that this growth completely frees her from uglier inclinations. There’s plenty of anxiety in the form of unanswered texts and casual sex, and on the jangly “Jealous,” Maq compares her own attention-seeking behavior and longing for affection to a love interest’s pet dog.
Running With the Hurricane is at its strongest when Camp Cope harness the swirling turmoil and ride it towards self-awareness. On the twangy “Blue,” Maq explores how the same loneliness that feels so isolating in one’s head can become a means of connection: “It’s all blue, that’s why I fit in with you.” The sentiment returns later on “The Mountain,” a gorgeous anthem of self-determination. “I climbed the mountain blind, I turned around to find a heart as complicated as mine,” Maq sings, perhaps pulling inspiration from the same Fleetwood Mac ballad the Chicks once did. The title track is one of the band’s best: Maq reckons with her self-doubt atop a galloping melody and layered harmonies that bring to mind the blooming self-realization of Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud. “There’s no other way to go,” she exuberantly proclaims. “The only way out is up.”
Just a few years ago, Camp Cope were determined to barrel through the hard parts; now, they’ve opened themselves to life’s chaos, ready to cruise alongside it. This shift from outward-looking protest to inward-facing resolve comes to a glorious climax on the album’s closer, “Sing Your Heart Out.” Featuring additional guitar from Courtney Barnett, it begins as a slow-building piano ballad in which Maq pledges herself as a vessel of love, in service to herself and others. “You are not your past, not your mistakes, not your money, not your pain, not the years you spent inside,” she proclaims, as her bandmates fall into place alongside her. “You can change and so can I.” As the song explodes into fireworks, they repeat the final verse like a mantra. It’s hard not to believe in its truth.
Correction: Courtney Barnett plays additional guitar on “Sing Your Heart Out”; she does not sing on the song.
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