Founded in Melbourne over home job tattoos, Camp Cope – Georgia Maq (songwriter, vocals, piano, acoustic & electric guitar), Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich (lead bass guitar) and Sarah Thompson (drums & percussion) – have been a force since the release of their self-titled debut album Camp Cope (2016). Their critically-acclaimed follow-up How to Socialise & Make Friends (2018) debuted at #6 on the ARIA Charts with incredible international acclaim including NPR (“Every unpolished moment stuns with turn-of-age earnestness”), The New Yorker (“The words, as raw as the band’s nervy energy, spill out as though she’s been holding them in forever”) and The Guardian (“In 20 years, young women especially will approach her and thank Camp Cope for encouraging them to pick up a guitar and tell their own stories”). Widely loved both in Australia and abroad and the album’s galvanising lead single, ‘The Opener’, shook up the Australian music industry. Both global and personal circumstances prompted Camp Cope’s change of perspective when work on Running With The Hurricane began in late 2019 – but when the pandemic struck a few months later, it forced a hiatus. The world had stopped and suddenly, there was no rush to get an album out and head back on the road. The trio got to just create art for art’s sake, without worrying about how it would perform. But it wasn’t just time Camp Cope had on their side. Running With The Hurricane finds the trio more confident and more skilled than ever before. Making the album the band knew their instruments like the backs of their hands; they were assured enough to ask for what they wanted in the studio. After years of fierce friendship and often relentless tour schedules, they had become innately comfortable as collaborators. Together they levelled up their skills, approach and sound. The resulting sound is still recognisably Camp Cope, just a little softer, a bit more relaxed and much more refined. Running With The Hurricane is an album concerned more with creating beauty than noise and, undoubtedly, is their strongest work yet.