Catching Up With Grouplove at SXSW
More than a decade after releasing their debut album, Grouplove was reminiscing on their earliest days performing at SXSW.
“When you have so much history here, it’s always fun to come back and step up from where you left off and extend the story again,” said Grouplove founding member Christian Zucconi on Saturday night.
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The alt-rock band was back in Austin, Texas, for one night only to perform at Amazon’s celebration of “Daisy Jones & the Six” at Hotel San José. Series stars Sam Claflin, Josh Whitehouse, Nabiyah Be and Sebastian Chacon were on hand to kick off the festivities.
“We got an early link to the show and I binged it in like three days,” said Grouplove frontwoman Hannah Hooper shortly before going onstage at Amazon’s outdoor “Prime, TX” pop-up. “It was fun as a musician to watch musicians in their process.”
The band’s setlist included a song from the show, “Look at Us Now (Honeycomb),” and music from their upcoming album “I Want It All Right Now,” slated for release on July 7.
“The album is really focusing on the push and pull between what we think we want, and what we actually need, and that emotional journey,” said Hooper, adding that another single and a music video will be dropping soon.
The band recorded their sixth studio album last spring, shortly after departing from Atlantic Records and before signing with Glassnote Records earlier this year.
“There was this grace period where we wrote with no label. It was exciting, terrifying, beautiful — all the feelings. So it’s all in there,” Hooper said. “As an artist, I’m always trying to get back to that youthful feeling.”
“We went into the studio last March with [producer] John Congleton and did the album with him, and it was just a really good, positive experience,” Zucconi added. “It’s been a wild ride the last few years, and this [album] felt the most freeing since the first record we made back in 2010-11. Which is really nice, to come full circle and have this ability to be free and express ourselves without anyone having a microscope over us for the first time in a while.”
Grouplove will spend much of 2023 on the road. This spring, the band will perform at the Innings Festival and Shaky Knees Festival before heading out on tour with Pink this summer.
“It’s been a while since real touring like that, living on a bus again,” Hooper said. “It’s definitely a readjustment. I think, like anything, it’s gonna take a minute, you know? But there’s the adventure of touring that is really fun. Everyone kind of gets obsessed with a routine, but it’s really the unexpected that keeps us growing. I’m excited to go back to the unexpected.”
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