THE PRESS RELEASE: “It starts like an alarm. Deleter is the lead track from Grouplove’s forthcoming fourth album Healer, and it is an emergency opener. It’s fuelled by pounding keys, squalling guitar lines, and lightning drumming before the voice of Christian Zucconi questions everything around him: faith systems, his sense of belonging, communities, his own psyche. “All this time I thought you were a leader / It turns out you’re only a deleter.” It could be interpreted as a political statement, but it’s also highly personal. “All this time been burning with a fever / It turns out I’ve always been my healer,” is also switched in as a rhyming line, and in the end sees Zucconi and his collaborator, wife and frontwoman Hannah Hooper realizing that amid every progression and every regression you always come back to yourself for the answers. They’re already within you. In October 2018, the band traveled to El Paso, Texas with esteemed producer Dave Sitek [of TV On The Radio] for a month. Sitek encouraged them both to simplify their sound and to extend it. The songs they made during this period are so ambitious, that it pushed them to become a seven-piece band on tour. The limitations were gone. They were away from the world, immersed and unplugged in the middle of nowhere. They were also half a mile from the border and during the height of Trump’s family separations crisis. “We were fortunate to collaborate with brilliant musical minds whose only agenda was to make honest and exciting music. It’s what you hope for. Malay is the perfect example of someone who creates from his inner music fan,” Dan recalls.”
MY TWO CENTS: I’ve never been a fan of these Los Angeles husband and wife-led pop-rockers. But that opening track is a corker any Brit-rock outfit would be glad to call their own. Pity the disc kind of settles down and stretches out into dreamier, groovier and far more melodic fare after that. But at least that gives you plenty of room to hear the lush textures and sonic stylings of producer Dave Sitek on tracks like Hail To The Queen and Burial.
