guallatiri peperoni: Grouplove In 'Honeymoon Phase' On First Date

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Grouplove In 'Honeymoon Phase' On First Date

MTV News' Rya Backer reunites with band members, who say, 'We haven't even hit our stride.'
By Rya Backer

Grouplove
Photo: MTV News

To spend time with Grouplove is to spend time with great friends you didn't even know you had — or, in my case, two friends I had and lost touch with, only to link back up and see them unchanged (grown and happier, even) in their shared next chapter. See, I went to college with the band's guitarist, Andrew Wessen, and therefore also spent time with his best friend, drummer Ryan Rabin. Reuniting with the pair alongside their new friends did not feel strained or, well, like work.

The five members of Grouplove (also including Hannah Hooper, Christian Zucconi and the very bearded Sean Gadd) met at an artists' retreat Wessen's brother co-founded in Crete, Greece. Immediately uniting over their love of creating music, the five separated upon the end of their stay. But their creative bond was only beginning.

So, when Hooper, Zucconi and Gadd visited Rabin and Wessen in their native L.A., the five decided to retreat to Rabin's basement for a bit of what they did best. Rabin explained, "We decided one day — we were bored, it was raining or something — to make some music."

"It was sunny, actually," the soft-spoken Zucconi chimed in.

"Well, we were just bored, then," Rabin responded, laughing.

And so began the makings of a band then called (the decidedly un-Googleable) Group. They're now one major-label signing and iPod commercial deep, but the band said they've only just begun. As for where Wessen sees himself, and the band, in five years, he said, "In all honesty, we haven't even hit our stride."

Rabin chimed in: "We've only been together — not even making music, just friends — for a couple years. Even though it's nonstop and we're always working, it still feels like a honeymoon phase. And I think we've just got to preserve that for as long as possible, 'cause that's what inspires us too, when we work together."

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