BY: Claire Borgelt 

Since 2013, Boston-based indie rock project Horse Jumper Of Love has delivered a sleepy, searching brand of slowcore. We met up with frontman Dimitri Giannopoulos in Austin to discuss the group's latest singles, “Gates of Heaven” and “Snake Eyes,” just four days after their release. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You've just put out two new songs, but I know one of them, “Gates of Heaven,” has been around for a long time. How has your relationship to that song changed since initially writing it? 

Dimitri: That was a song I wrote in my early 20s that I had just been kind of sitting on for a while. Recently, we put some time in at a studio and we ended up with more time there than we thought we'd have. I just kind of went through my back catalog of songs that we'd never recorded, and that was one of them. It's one we've tried many times, but we'd never gotten it right. Finally, we just had enough time to sit with it and do it the right way. I felt good about it, so I was ready to put it out.

As far as “Snake Eyes” goes, you initially shared that one a bit earlier. What journey has this song taken? Would you say it's changed a lot since that first version?

Dimitri: Yeah, that was one that I put out on an acoustic album. I just wanted to try making it rock a little more. It was the same thing, where we were at that studio and we just had more time left. I was like, let's just re-visit this one and try to make it a little heavier and more produced. The original one's pretty lo-fi, so we changed some chords up to keep it interesting.

What inspired the heavier approach? 

Dimitri: Well, we started playing it live after Heartbreak Rules came out. We just kind of jammed on it for a while. We were like, ‘this definitely has the potential to be a little more of like, a rock song or something.' 

Speaking of Heartbreak Rules, I know you recorded a lot of it up in the Catskills. How do you feel that the setting impacted you? 

Dimitri: It was a huge part of the sound, for sure. I was just with my friend Brad, who we've worked with a bunch in the past. It was just me and him, and we were having really relaxed days. We would get up and like you know, eat some food and just chill, go for walks around the area. We'd get back to the house we were staying at and be in a really mellow mood to record the song. I feel like being there really influenced the whole vibe of the album.

Would you say that sort of atmosphere is something you want to continue with for future albums? 

Dimitri: I'm not sure. I kind of go back and forth sometimes. I really like soft acoustic music, but I also really like heavy music. I feel like throughout our recording career, I've tried to find a balance of both those things. Sometimes I feel like the dynamics really hit me when we're playing, so I try to balance the soft and the heavy and just see what happens.

I also wanted to ask about the Smashing Pumpkins cover at the end of that record. What made you choose that song specifically?

Dimitri: I was going through a bunch of old demo cassette tapes I found. That was one I recorded when I was like 19, and I found it randomly. I really liked it and I just wanted it to be out in the world. “Luna” is one of my top 10 favorite songs of all time.

What are some of the other songs on that list? Do you have any other songs you want to cover in the future? 

Dimitri: I'm not sure. I haven't done a lot of covers. I've done some Gram Parsons covers before that are just on my tape deck, but I don't know if I want to release those or if they're just for fun.

Last question – do you have any hobbies that you tend to gravitate towards in your free time? What else do you like to do besides music? 

Dimitri: I really like to read. That's probably my favorite hobby. I don't know if that counts as a hobby. I've tried to get into like, wood whittling. And I like to draw. But that's just stuff I do for myself. I do draw a lot of the album covers. The only time when I really let other people see my art is for that. But yeah, I need to get more hobbies that aren't music for sure. I'm trying to find a balance and keep it as a hobby by doing other stuff that isn't Horse Jumper. 

What are you reading right now?

I actually just finished a book about the Greek Revolution in the 1820s. It was like a really dense history book. I like a lot of like nonfiction like that. I just started The Fall by Albert Camus, too. 

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