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The Indiana Daily Student

arts

Local Surfing releases new EP

Hannah Groves sings "Palm Tree Dream" Wednesday in front of "Middle Earth," a Bloomington co-operatvie living place. Groves is a leader singer and a guitarist of the band "Local Surfing." The band was organized in last spring and released a second album three days ago.

When singer-guitarist Hannah Groves and drummer Brett Hoffman formed surf-rock band Local Surfing last spring, the duo wasn’t in pursuit of a serious project, Groves said. Rather, they were a tongue-in-cheek take on the genre – there’s no surfing in the Midwest.

“It started out as a joke,” Groves said. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we made a surf band about our lives, since they’re so irrelevant to surfing?”

But after seeing a positive crowd reaction at Local Surfing’s first show, Groves and Hoffman decided to flesh out their songs and expand to a four-piece. On Tuesday, they released a new EP, “What a Buzzkill,” their first since last April’s self-produced “Dead Friend” EP.

In addition to the bigger lineup and bulked-up songs, “What a Buzzkill” also shows an expanded approach to recording, Groves said. The band tracked it with producer William Chen over the course of several sessions in the fall.

Groves said Chen, a friend of the band, didn’t charge for his production duties – one of the benefits of playing in a tight-knit DIY music scene.

“I think the EP we just released is a testament to how you don’t need to pay a company to make a quality set of recordings,” she said. “The tools that are around you, they’re on par with the capabilities of companies who get paid a shit ton to do the same thing.”

And while “What a Buzzkill” still contains the band’s self-aware humor on songs like “Cowabunga (Surfin’ Moo.S.A),” it also features darker tracks like “Song 4 Speed” and “Friend Who Died.”

Groves said she wrote the former about a Vyvanse binge. “It’s like a breakup letter to Vyvanse,” she said. And while the latter was written in the spring without a specific person in mind, it has taken on a new meaning for Groves.

“I did have a friend who liked that song who killed himself last summer, so that song’s kind of about him now,” she said. “[Songs] totally exist out of time. You can write something and then something different happens.”

Groves, who also makes solo music under the name Duck Trash, said playing and writing songs for Local Surfing also works as a stress reliever more than her solo work does.

“I have a tendency to not be lighthearted about music stuff, and that’s exhausting for me,” she said. “This is a way to unload that. It’s helped me look at performing in a different way.”

Groves comes from a classical music background; she played cello in Indianapolis’s New World Youth Symphony Orchestra and studied music composition for a semester at Butler University before transferring to IU . She said that training sometimes puts her into a self-critical headspace.

But that experience also translates to performing with other musicians, even in a rock setting, she said. Playing in a band takes some stress off performing, as does seeing how crowds respond to Local Surfing’s music, she said.

“People knock each other over and mosh,” she said. “I love that. The energy there is so beautiful.”

There’s a collaborative spirit to “What a Buzzkill,” Groves said. “The album’s credits list a total of eight contributors, from the band members to Chen to album artist Sarah Conaway. Groves said those collaborative opportunities are a particularly fulfilling part of playing in Local Surfing.

“If you want something done the way you see it, do it with people you’re close to,” she said. “All the people making this were on the same page. I love collaborating with people. It’s always way stronger than any one person can do.”

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