'It Feels Like The Perfect Time To Wake People Up'

"It's important to always be evolving," says Christian Zucconi. The guitarist/vocalist for Los Angeles-based indie outfit Grouplove is talking about his band's history, but particularly this moment. With their latest Australian tour looming ("we love coming to Australia and playing music, it's always the highlight of our year"), the quintet are in a liminal moment. Nominally, the tour is still coming in the wake of their third LP, 2016's Big Mess, but local audiences will be treated to a host of new material; the band having written the songs for their forthcoming fourth album.

"We're flying high off these new songs we've got cooking," explains Zucconi, 38, fresh off writing with the band in "remote" Northern California. "That's where we're at right now: thinking about getting the new record out not too far in the future, maybe a year from now. We're hoping to play a couple of songs [in Australia], we're going to spoil you. I feel like this is going to be the best record we've ever made, honestly. I'm excited for you guys to hear it."

So, the question begs, what are these new songs like? "They're loud," Zucconi offers. "Real loud." Grouplove's debut album was titled, with some sense of irony, Never Trust A Happy Song; the band best-known, then and now, for their peppy, poppy, party-starting Hottest 100-crashing jam Tongue Tied, which sure sounds like a happy song. But not this time around. On their as-yet-untitled upcoming LP, Zucconi promises, the songs are going to be, and sound, angry; the record drawing influences from the bands - Fugazi, Nirvana, Pixies, The Sugarcubes - Grouplove loved in their formative days.

"We've been wanting to make the best grunge-rock album ever since we were 13 years old and this is our attempt at doing it," Zucconi laughs. "It's going to be super-raw, super-organic, super-fucking-guitar-driven, super-catchy, heavy rock'n'roll. Fucking raw and right to your heart. Feels like the world needs it right now."

Making this noisy, nasty record, Zucconi offers, is a response to 2018, an album of the times. "Everyone is so distracted today, between all the bad shit that's happening politically in America to everyone being a zombie on their phone all the time," he says. "It feels like the perfect time to wake people up, with this heavier, louder music. We're hoping to spread a message of being more conscious of what's going on around you like, 'Put your phone down and look around'."

More of these songs are being sung by Hannah Hooper - Zucconi's partner in life and out front of Grouplove - but in a fashion that, like the music, is evolving. "Hannah is singing more lead than she has before, but she's singing in this new voice she's finally just discovered," Zucconi says. "She hasn't been singing long; she only started singing once Grouplove took off. She never thought she'd be a singer. Recently, she's discovered this other side of herself that she didn't know existed in music. And she's singing in this much more real, more guttural, more Courtney Love-like, more screaming fucking badass voice that no one knew she had. When she first sung like that, only a few months ago, we were all like, 'Holy shit! This is fucking unbelievable!'"

Zucconi, too, is letting loose his own primal screams in the new songs; and, thus, he can't wait to sing them on stage. "Screaming like that, that's a fucking awesome feeling," he beams. "It's such good therapy to get out there every night and really lay your emotions on the table. It's good as a person, and as an artist. It's good to let the people that listen to you, that look up to you, know that it's okay to be hurting, that we can all fucking let this out together. That's why the bands that changed our life were bands like Nirvana. These bands that let you know, 'Oh, shit, I'm not alone.'

"That's what these new songs are like, for us. There's this real pain, this raw emotion in there. We felt that's something you don't hear in a lot of bands these days. We want to be the band that brings that pain, that desperation, back into music."