Interview: Grouplove
Our DJ Hannah Weir recently got the chance to sit down with Sean Gadd and Hannah Hooper from Los Angeles-based indie rock five-piece Grouplove. They recently released their debut album, Never Trust A Happy Song, and are currently gearing up for a tour through Australia. Read on for their thoughts on Greece, financial troubles, and making people happy.
So your history is far from common for a band – meeting in an art collective on the island of Crete. It’s very mystical and cool, and you guys have known each other for roughly the same amount of time – not that long. What effect do you think that had on your dynamic as a band?
Hannah: I think what it did for us right off the bat was the fact that meeting new friends gives you a brand of total freedom. No one is like, “oh you were that girl who was really quiet,” or, “you were that dude who was always really silly and not serious,” and we were able to be who we were at that point in our lives without inhibition; it gave us the opportunity to be who we were and not care about it.
Sean: We had no baggage or bad habits with each other. Certain bands, when they form in high school, can fall into certain habits or dynamics, and I think as a group we have always been trying to move forward and change, and we all have different influences and styles that set us apart from each other.
H: Yeah, we weren’t planning on becoming a band, we were just hanging out and making music – I had never even written music, or played music or thought about being in a band, so it was really just liberating in every way possible. We were all at this point in our lives where we (specifically me and Christian) couldn’t afford New York anymore if we wanted to be artists, and Sean definitely wasn’t trying to stay in London—
S: Yeah, I wanted to get out of London for sure. Meeting these guys was a total breath of fresh air, musically we click, and our humor – we’ve just had so much fun since we met each other.
H: And just by chance, Ryan, who was producing music at the time, had a studio at his parents house, janky equipment but a studio nonetheless, so we all end up flying out to Los Angeles to record. So, we’re very disorganized people, but…
With your powers combined!
H: (laughs) Yes! We all together make a really solid person. Seperately we’re all kind of disasters (laughs).
I think that “powers combined” sentiment is attributed to the fact that y’all are all songwriters in the band; it’s a very democratic way of looking at making music with other people. So, which songs, if I may ask, were like the “little child” that they nursed to life? And how can you tell which song is whose baby?
S: I think that you can tell because the person that sings the lead vocals in the song is their baby so to speak, and we all kind of chip in, like that movie “Three Men and a Baby,” so we would help raise the baby together but in the end it’s still someone’s baby.
(H agrees)
S: I mean, someone would maybe choose what clothes the baby is going to wear—
H: Yeah, but it was their baby, but we kind of wanted to take care of it!
The song “Naked Kids” has a rap in it – did you write that rap, Hannah?
H: Yeah, I wrote the rap. The way that song came to be is really funny because it really was written in the dead of winter, in upstate New York; I left the city and stayed at a friends house, and Christian had to come up there and save me. I thought I’d be more creative there but I just went totally crazy and was cooped up and painting all the time, and ordering pizza. I felt like “what am I doing here?” But yeah, that song’s pretty tongue in cheek.
How was writing a rap with regards to writing lyrics, and performing it as well? In relation to singing, how is it different for you?
H: Well, I think it’s kind of one and the same because they both come from the same place – kind of a free flow place, but when I was growing up I really looked up to my brother, and at that time, when he was in high school and I was just starting to go to parties with him, everyone was freestyling, so my way of fitting in would be like – chugging a beer and just wearing all of his clothes, and really just freestyling to try and impress his friends. I guess that was my first bit of being a musician, but it really was kind of an impromptu comedy at the same time.
So what obstacles, if any, did y’all have to sort of get over before you felt like you were a cohesive team?
H: Oh there were so many.
S: Obstacles were: finding a way that we could easily stay in LA, and be together again—
H: He had to get a visa, that was a huge obstacle.
S: Yeah, that was a worrying time for me, because I’m in a band that’s all Americans, and I’m an English guy, so the question was, how can I make it so I can stay here and work here in the band… Because I have good friends and good managers, we were able to make it work, but that was a tough process.
H: Yeah, that was when we were all broke, we left everything we knew, so, other than Andrew and Ryan, who are from LA, we spend a while mooching (laughs). We didn’t really know what to do, because it’s not like employment is up right now, so we had to find a way to make it work financially. How are we gonna eat, what are we gonna do, how are we gonna make rent – these were definitely questions on our mind. So Christian and I put all our money into this little backhouse on the river in LA, Sean moved into the barn there, and we just familied it up. And spent all our time just rehearsing, playing music again, and getting to know each other now that we’re like, “Oh shit this isn’t just like, us on the island anymore, we’re really gonna do this. In the real world, no less.”
I guess, going off of that, which qualities did you all see in each other that you were able to grasp upon and say “this is someone I could make music with,” and in a way be committed to – what was something you saw in each other that really confirmed it?
H: Sheer diversity of talent for me. I felt like in Greece I heard a lot of Sean’s songs that he’d written and felt really moved by them, they have such a journey to them. And Christian has such a completely different style, very subconscious and not really narrative. Ryan is such an incredible drummer, and Andrew is so technical, and we all just had this different stuff to offer, and I felt a real security in that.
S: Yeah. And apart from Hannah, who is a visual artist, we’d all been in bands before and this time it was just so refreshing. Being with these guys again, from the moment we met there seemed to be something just magical and faithful about the time we spent together on that beautiful island, which we don’t quite know how we got to, its such a dream really—
H: I know, it feels faded or something now. I feel like there are some of us in the band that sort of take it day to day, and kind of just make stuff without really figuring out what to do with it, and aren’t really very businessy, and then we just have these amazing managers that are all about that. Ryan, our producer and drummer gave us a sort of safety net by making us deadlines for when to record things, and there’s something in giving it an order that helps a lot.
Sean, what is an American word or phrase that you have picked up on and used the most?
S: It’s interesting because when I got back to London… the way I phrase certain things, I’ve picked up so many Americanisms that a lot of people say I’ve lost my London accent, and over here, it doesn’t sound at all like I have. In my area of west London, I can hear that I still sound English, but I’ve just picked up so many different things. But the one word or phrase that I’ve picked up—when we went over to the west coast with two members of our band that are from there—probably the word gnarly, which is a kind of surfer word you would definitely never hear anyone from West London saying.
H: I think he started out maybe using the word as a joke—
S: Yeah, I always pick up things that are kind of silly and make me laugh, and all of a sudden, I’m saying them! Sometimes when you’re in another country, you pronounce things the way they pronounce it, and it just makes your life easier, like the whole tomato/tomahtoe thing, now I say tomato—
H: And what about what you said for a while at shows, where you’d be like, “Hey we’re Grouplove, we’re from Las Angeleez!”, and people would be like, “Where is that?” “What part of England is Las Angeleez?!”
S: Yeah totally, it just makes life easier.
Gnarly. Well, I just have one more question for you guys: what is the forseeable future of Grouplove and what are y’all looking forward to the most?
S: Just keep doing what we’re so lucky to be doing right now, keep playing and—
H: Touring. I think the forseeable future for the band is just touring for awhile, but it’s kind of unpredictable. I mean, just getting “Colours” on the radio, and what that’s done for our audience and how outside of LA now we actually have an audience in every city we go to, that was totally — I didn’t see that coming. (laughs)
(Sean agrees, laughs)
H: See, Sean and I are more the day-to-day ones, but I think that what’s to come is probably just touring, and hopefully just to keep putting on crazy, wild animal shows.
S: Get wilder and wilder. And keeping each other happy. And hopefully through that, we can keep the audience happy.
