Filed under: Entertainment
One of the more affable bands to land in recent memory is Grouplove. Brought together by a series of events that frankly sounds too weird to be fabricated, the five-piece coalesces in a mix of punchy vocals, tight harmonies, and youthful abandon. They are an "LA band," but their story begins beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. The tale is best told by the band itself. Its members collectively recalled Grouplove's origins via email while on tour:
"Maybe it starts the night [singer] Hannah [Hooper] met [lead singer and guitarist] Christian [Zucconi] at one of his acoustic shows in New York in the summer of 2008. Their connection was instantaneous and they ended up listening to tapes under the Brooklyn Bridge until the wee hours of the morning. Hannah had just been invited to an artist's residency in the small village of Avdou, Crete and was set to leave in a week. She was worried that if she left she would never have contact with Christian again, so she invited him...and he said yes.
They sold everything they had to buy the ticket and sublet their apartments. [Guitarist] Andrew [Wessen]'s brother set up the residency, which brought Andrew out there. They also set up a small music festival in the town, for which a group of musicians were making a pilgrimage to play. [Bassist] Sean [Gadd] had come with a group of musicians from London to play. [Drummer] Ryan [Rabin] was finishing an exchange program in the Czech Republic and Andrew called to invite him to play drums with him at the festival."
Grouplove's sound is undeniably nineties, but standing on the shoulders of giants is not what makes the band great. Yes, Zucconi yowls like a combination of Frank Black and Billy Corgan. And yes, the group's loud-quiet-loud delivery, boy/girl dynamic only fuels comparisons to The Pixies, The Smashing Pumpkins, or a host of other pre-millenium bands. But Grouplove avoids being a nineties re-run, and the band is better for it.
The band employs a straightforward vigor that belies the sort of disaffection that ran through much of early nineties alt-rock. Also, Sean Gadd's bass on songs like "Lovely Cup" is way funkier than almost anything that came out of that scene. Grouplove's effervescence seems to flow from the incredibly close friendship that has formed between its members, though it should be clear by now that this group loves each other.
Read more at The Huffington Post