Premiere: Sean Gadd, ‘I Am a Lion’

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Sean Gadd (Photo by osh Hansen)
Sean Gadd (Photo by osh Hansen)

“The world we perceive is not the only truth,” Sean Gadd sings in his new tune “I Am a Lion,” one of many pearls of wisdom on the former Grouplove bassist’s debut EP, “The Change Scene.”

The EP, due Oct. 17, marks a new — but delayed — chapter for Gadd, who originally intended to release full-length album in 2017. The timing has changed, but the essence of his message hasn’t: In the face of seemingly insurmountable problems, you, too, can be a lion.

Gadd came to Los Angeles in 2009 from his native London as a founding member of Grouplove, with ​Christian Zucconi​ and ​Hannah Hooper​. He was the hatted, bearded, smiling and swaggering Brit, the party animal who finally took to Twitter in 2014 to announce he was departing to band to seek treatment for alcohol and drug addiction. “It was bleak, I had lost all direction. I was completely empty,” he says of that time period. But, “in a way, for me it actually became the most enlightening time of my life. I had to find out who I was without all the things that came with being in a successful band. I’d lost friends. I’d lost my band. My record deal was gone. Who was I now?”

After a time, he found solace in his acoustic guitar. “This is the music I’ve always wanted to make, I just didn’t realize the mayhem and madness I’d have to go through to get there,” says Gadd, now three years sober. “I don’t mind telling my story, and if it can help others, then that’s a good thing.”

“Radar Sounds,” the song Gadd preemptively unveiled in the spring of 2017, leads off the EP, with “I Am a Lion” anchoring the five-song effort. They burst with a guitar-driven energy that somehow (seemingly) only British songwriters know how to create, and his plainspoken troubadour vocals suggest he is a man happy to still have the chance to share his gift. “The highs and the lows / and the harder the blows / Will help you keep moving,” he assures in “I Am a Lion.”

The EP was made with producer Scott Barber in his Barber Shop Recording Studio and features contributions from former bandmates Zucconi, Hooper and Ryan Rabin (who did the mastering), Family of the Year’s Joe and Sebastian Keefe and Christopher Vick (Draemings), among others.

||| Stream: “I Am a Lion” and “Radar Sounds”