There’s no way to sugarcoat this so I’ll just say it, Grouplove blew my mind and played one of the best shows I’ve seen this year to open the 2022 season of Raider Alley.
Raider Alley has been around for a few years now but in 2019, it was moved to the Engineering Key and live music was added. While the first year started off small with Texas Country artists like Kyle Park and William Clark Green playing shows before games, things changed last season when there was more variety in the artists booked. Shaq did a DJ set for our home opener, Waka Flocka Flame, Josh Abbott Band, and George Clinton with Parliament Funkadelic played shows throughout the season, and Coolio played a show for our homecoming. This year, it seems as though the variety will continue with Grouplove being nabbed to play our home opener.
When I first saw the announcement, my roommates and I originally laughed saying how people were only gonna show up to hear Tongue Tied, one of the defining songs of 2010s indie pop and the band’s biggest hit to date. It has nearly 700 million streams on Spotify and has gone platinum 5 times. And while that statement may be true, there were definitely people already screaming “PLAY TONGUE TIED” three or four songs into their set, their set was a party for the entire hour whether you only knew that song or not.
It’s gonna take a while to put together words to describe just how great the band was live. Between singers Hannah Hooper and Christian Zucconi’s energy and vocal performances on stage, Benjamin Homola’s super tight and hard-hitting drumming, and an intense crowd singing nearly every song back louder than the band, it was a perfect storm of greatness and positive energy. Hooper and Zucconi were also super talkative on stage with Hooper saying that the following Murray State vs. Texas Tech football game was going to be the first football game she had ever been to in her life while Zucconi mentioned that it was the second time the band had played in Lubbock before asking if anyone had been to the previous show 10 years prior.
The band’s setlist ran through their whole catalouge and played one of those shows where they started a song and you tell yourself, “Oh wait! This is their song?” Songs like Raspberry, Itchin’ on a Photograph, and Standing in the Sun come to mind in that category. But even songs I didn’t know were absolute ragers like Scratch and Just What You Want, the latter of which caused a mosh pit to break out. But of course, the band has hits and those hits were received extremely well. Songs like Deleter and Tounge Tied had people jumping and dancing throughout the whole crowd. The band ended their hour-long set with Colours which, surprisingly, got a louder crowd reaction than Tounge Tied did.
I think the easiest thing to say is that this show set the bar very high for the Raider Alley shows this semester. There’s no better feeling than going into a show with low or no expectations and getting them absolutely shattered and finding out a band you’ve kind of liked is incredible live. I’m not sure if Grouplove has stans but after Saturday afternoon’s show, I might need to become one.
Raider Alley will continue to bring free concerts to the Engineering Key two hours before kick-off for each home football game. The announcements tend to come a few days before each game. All photos by Zachary Sorrels.
Grouplove Setlist:
Primetime
Deleter
Raspberry
Itchin’ on a Photograph
Lovely Cup
Schoolboy
Beans
Standing in the Sun
Scratch
Tongue Tied
Just What You Want
Ways to Go
Colours
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