Grouplove
"We’re like five very different people playing together. We’re from all over the world," Grouplove guitarist Andrew Wessen says.
It’s noon on a Thursday and Grouplove guitarist Andrew Wessen yawns into the phone about once every other sentence. The band just got back from Australia, is gearing up for a pre-Lolla show, followed by Lolla, followed by a secret aftershow with Young the Giant and Manchester Orchestra.
Wessen sleepily stumbles over my first question: How would you describe your music?
“Oh man, that’s one hell of a question, isn’t it?” he asks back. “Ask me again at the end. I’ll try to think of something. I don’t know what to tell you. That’s literally the hardest question.”
While Wessen struggles to put a label on the music he and friends Christian Zucconi, Hannah Hooper, Ryan Rabin and Daniel Gleason make, others haven’t. Their sound has been described as “anthemic and high-energy,” and “sunny, hook-driven indie pop.”
Their second studio album, Spreading Rumours, came out last year and the band is touring with fellow Loufest act Portugal. The Man this fall.
With a crazy group like theirs, touring can get a little stressful. Their crew holds the pieces together, Wessen says, which takes away three-quarters of what he'd otherwise be freaking out about. Because everything is in working order for every show, he explains, “You can actually just not stress about that. You can stress about your performance.”
To shake out the other 25 percent of pre-show nerves, they blast music, headbang and jump around. They also push each other a lot and knock things over, which Wessen categorizes generically as “just weird stuff.” It’s all part of their routine as friends.
The group spends about 300 days a year together, Wessen estimates, so when they have time off, they go their separate ways.
“It’d be almost inhuman and crazy to spend any more time together,” he says. They need time off of the tour bus, for sure. Those off days, though, are the tricky part of tour life for Wessen.
“You don’t know what to do with yourself. At least when you’re playing shows, you know yeah, this is right, this is what I should be doing,” he says. Wessen second-guesses himself when he’s got time to himself. What he’s really sure of is playing with the band, and that keeps him plenty busy.
Wessen says that with nearly 250 shows each year, that go-go-go feeling never stops. But that’s what keeps Grouplove going, he says.
“Our tour manager’s like ‘You’ve gotta be here’ or ‘You’ve got a new project’,” he says. It’s annoying to hear, but it helps. “When you realize you don’t have that guy yelling at you, you miss it. It’s really bizarre.”
The band has been through its share of ups and downs over the past year. They lost bassist Sean Gadd, gained Daniel Gleason and made sacrifices as singer Hannah Hooper underwent vocal chord surgery.
The fearless friends have been around the world together, from the artists colony in Crete where they all met, to the club in Glasgow that burned down during their set.
“Everything I thought was the scariest shit in the world,” Wessen says, “We’ve come and gone through.”
