I have seen Grouplove a few times, and they seem to be a bigger deal each time. Headlining the 2011 Bloomfest in Los Angeles on Saturday, and just coming back from the UK where they are touring, the five piece band had even more material to install on stage this time.
They have recently announced for September 5th the release of their debut album ‘Never trust a happy song’, which will be produced by their drummer Ryan Rabin, and which will be following their self-titled EP released last year.
However, they are still the same, same stage dynamism, same jumping around, same soaring and screamed-at-the-top-of-their-lungs choruses, same ecstatic desire to uplift the crowd at any means. But I don’t mean by that that they tried too much, everything was coming naturally to them, as they seemed so comfortable with each other, so fantastically in tune, that their catchy-summer anthems worked very well on the Bloomfest crowd. Even their mismatched look, their arty mask and roses-on-keyboard-ripped-jeans look, gave them a sort of coolness fitting with their happy tunes and not-so-happy lyrics; indeed who would guess that such an upbeat song like ‘Colours’ has lyrics like ‘He shot himself, self/There's blood on the wall/'Cause he couldn't face the truth’?
They played all their well-known songs from their first EP, ‘Colours’, ‘Naked Kids’, 'Don't Say Oh Well', and bassist Sean Gadd even dedicated the quieter ‘Gold Coast’ to fellow Londonien Amy Winehouse, ‘who had left us today’.
Even though Christian Zucconi on guitar and Hannah Hooper on keyboards, were front stage and duetted most of the time, there was no real frontman/woman in the band, as everyone, bassist Sean Gadd, and guitarist Andrew Wessen had their solo vocal moment during their quiet-loud-rioting series of songs.
They sounded fresh and sweet, a sort of love pop fest in the middle of evening, and they had this contagious enthusiasm, which looked like an ecstatic-collective nervous breakdown at times. They were honestly happy, throwing large multicolor balloons to the crowd as if they were giant dopamine pills. Aren’t young people supposed to be depressed and tortured? Youth angst is dead, Grouplove killed it on Saturday night with their joyous hand-clappings and their exhilarating sing-alongs.