Stephanie Hunt’s much anticipated debut LP as Buffalo Hunt has been on a winding path to release. The album, Ambitions of Ambiguity, first popped up last fall, but then disappeared with only the wonderfully trippy video for “Walkin’ in a TV” left behind.
Now though, the record seems to have finally found a home with Austin imprint Nine Mile Records and is slated for official release early next year.
“It’s okay to be confused, it’s in the title of the album,” offers Hunt of the LP’s timeline. “These are times where ambiguity reigns especially in terms of being ambitious. I released Ambitions of Ambiguity on bandcamp only during the pandemic because I couldn’t hold it in any longer. So there are people who have already heard it and I am grateful that they have. It was up for a few months and taken off so that it could have a proper full release that I was not able to give the record before recently signing with Nine Mile Records. Vinyl is in the works too now! Perhaps a clumsy release but it seems the rule book has officially been thrown out the window.”
Hunt thrives in throwing out the rule book and writing her own script. Whether through her acting career, or other music projects like Nancy and Beth, the local songwriter is always pushing the envelope of what’s expected.
In fairness, Hunt thrives in throwing out the rule book and writing her own script. Whether through her acting career, or other music projects like Nancy and Beth, the local songwriter is always pushing the envelope of what’s expected. It’s only appropriate then that she should continue to surprise in the uncertainty of releasing an album in especially uncertain times.
“It’s impacted all of it,” she notes of the pandemic’s influence on the album. “The track order, the meaning of the songs, everything changed after the pandemic. Even the name of the album. I realized what the greater message of each of the songs was – a searching and freefall of failures in various situations. I think that the pandemic did that for a lot of people, was a filter of life experience that has affected how everything is perceived.
“My music and creativity has changed in that I really want to share it with people more than ever,” she continues. “For a long time songwriting was something I did just for myself, but I feel like now it’s such an intimate way to connect with strangers and I crave that feeling more because surface level communication just doesn’t cut it these days.”
That sense of longing and struggle for connection swoons through Buffalo Hunt’s new video “Addicted to Reality,” premiering below. The video backtracks a slow motion shedding of various outfits and plunge into the ocean, as the song warps deliciously like a mellower, more pop-tuned St. Vincent. For the recording at Echo Lab in Denton, Hunt recruited The Texas Gentlemen’s Nik Lee and Dan Creamer for guitar and keys, respectively, with rhythm from Barbera FG’s bass and McKenzie Smith on drums.
Buffalo Hunt’s August 29th Hotel Vegas show has been postponed, but Stephanie Hunt will be hosting a songwriter series at Lambert’s every Wednesday during September.
Check out the video below.
This article appears in August 13 • 2021.
