Dartmouth Soundoff
You don't always choose the concerts at which you end up. Per the urging of a friend (and coincidently fellow Dartbeat writer), her and I attended Grouplove last Wednesday night at Bowery Ballroom in New York.
Grouplove is an LA-based indie-rock band currently touring to support their most recent release,Spreading Rumours.Their biggest chart success, "Tongue Tied," peaked at #1 on the US Alternative Charts, is RIAA-certified platinum, and was a regular feature in my spin class freshman winter, constituting my largest single exposure to the band. Aside from this, I discovered that I had a passive familiarity with some of their songs on their first album when I looked them up after buying my ticket.
Wednesdaynight rolled around, and after a ticketing snafu at the door (seriously folks, don't trust Craigslist) and an extra $20, we entered the venue, which from the street was misleadingly quiet, considering the sold out show that was to take place on the inside later that night.
Since there was no use lingering around the bar (it's a tough life being only 20 in New York City), we made our way to the stage and secured some prime real estate standing room on the right side of the house.
The opening act was The Rubens, a vanilla Australian indie-band, who played a 45-minute set, before the stage crew took an equal amount of time dismantling the opener’s set in preparation for Grouplove.
After a lot of standing and waiting, not to mention some finagling towards the center until we were right up against the stage, the lights dimmed and Skrillex's "Goin' Down," blasted from the speakers as Grouplove took the stage amidst smoke machines, black lights, and an, um illicit, odor that seeped into the front rows of the audience.
Grouplove's set drew mostly from their new album. Despite never having heard songs like “Bitin’ the Bullet” and “School Boy,” I was able to sing along to the choruses by the end of their songs, reflecting their style of simple songwriting. They did some serious jumping around the stage; Zucconi was getting such a workout he had to, mid-set, remove his bathrobe, which was almost on flair-par with co-lead Hannah Hooper’s skin-tight full body leopard print leotard.
“Tongue Tied,” played towards the end of the set was a sure-fire crowd pleaser, it was ended by a set which could possibly be described as an intense festival experience, complete with strobe lights so aggressive the band looked like they were being filmed in stop motion and a mysterious bass pulse that didn’t seem to be coming from any particular member’s efforts. Drummer Ryan Rabin came out from behind his throne—revealing long johns in lieu of real pants—to wail on a single tom drum, while the band all lined up with him in a quasi-choreographed fashion and danced and jumped in a way that would make any high school track coach salivate.
The encore contained their biggest hits after “Tongue Tied”—“Itchin’ On a Photograph” and “Ways to Go.” Andy Hull from Manchester Orchestra also made an appearance in a collaborative effort of a track entitled “Make It to Me,” which didn’t quite carry the energy of an encore performance, but it was nice, nonetheless. The show ended with “Colours,” their very first single, which to be completely honesty, isn’t my favorite song of theirs, but they closed the song and show with a high-energy coda spearheaded by Rabin.
As the crowd left the house and spilled into the streets, my ultra-regulated off-term sleep habits were making me yearn for my bed. It was just passedmidnightwhen we hopped on the E-line and headed uptown.