Grouplove performed at 9:30 Club recently to tour their latest album, I Want It All Right Now, but they also introduced DC to a few new songs! Steve Satzberg was there to photograph the show.

This article is adapted from a press release.

To launch their current tour in February, Grouplove released their frenetic new single “Chances.” With the band’s vocalist/keyboardist Hannah Hooper at the helm, the new offering is an overstimulated, hallucinogenic, aggressive singsong. A band that transcends their ever-shapeshifting genre, Grouplove too has evolved over the last decade, channeling their ecstatic energy into the deepest tensions of the human psyche, all while playing with the contradictions and complications of existing.

“I’m reclusive, I get in my head a lot and I write a lot of lists,” Hannah said. “I’m painfully aware that all the magic in my life happens when I’m not like this. When I take chances — big ones, small ones, scary ones… whatever they may be, that’s when I grow.”

Stream “Chances” by Grouplove on YouTube:

Across their 22-song setlist at 9:30 Club on March 26, Grouplove presented five songs from I Want It All Right Now, but the band added six selections from their 2011 debut album, Never Trust a Happy Song, to the setlist. Grouplove closed their main set with “Cream” from I Want It All Right Now, and they kicked off their encore with “Itching’ on a Photograph” from Never Trust a Happy Song. They also played an exciting cover of “Song 2” by Blur in the latter half of the set.

On their new album I Want It All Right Now, Grouplove offer up a body of work built on a raw but incandescent sound that vocalist/keyboardist Hannah Hooper refers to as “resistance pop.” As Hooper reveals, the Atlanta-based band’s sixth full-length emerged from a period of intense transformation for herself and her husband/bandmate, vocalist/guitarist Christian Zucconi.

“For me, this whole journey started with wanting or asking for certain things from the world around me, then slowly turning inward and realizing I needed to pay more attention to what was going on internally,” Hannah said. Over the course of 11 shapeshifting songs, GROUPLOVE’s debut release for Glassnote Records documents that progression from external searching to radical self-discovery, infusing each track with the wildly unbridled spirit the band has always embodied.

Produced by John Congleton (a Grammy Award-winner known for his work with St. Vincent, Regina Spektor, and Sharon Van Etten), I Want It All Right Now fully harnesses the ecstatic energy GROUPLOVE have brought to the stage on multiple international headline tours and at leading festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Lollapalooza. In a major leap forward for the band — whose lineup also includes bassist Daniel Gleason, guitarist Andrew Wessen, and drummer Ben Homola — the album explores the deepest tensions of the human psyche with equal parts tenderness, curiosity, and exacting self-revelation. A bold evolution of the defiantly sincere songwriting they first delivered on their 2011 debut Never Trust a Happy Song, I Want It All Right Now ultimately leaves the listener newly awakened to the wisdom and power of their own intuition.

Here are some photos of Grouplove performing at 9:30 Club on March 26, 2024. All pictures copyright and courtesy Steve Satzberg.