“I’m sorry I don’t have much banter, I haven’t spoken to anyone but myself for a year,” frontman Harry Koisser jokes, clad in full camo print and a ‘Choose Love’ t-shirt. This could well be true – there’s been a musical absence of a year and a half, with Peace taking some time off from the buzz generated from their second album, Happy People, to recalibrate. With that in mind, everyone who’s twitter username was @youvibesohard in 2012 and all their mates had turned out in force for this tour, sending us in a little time-machine to the indie larks of our teenage years.
Headlining ‘Topman on Tour with NME’, it felt as if no time had passed, like the B-town movement of 2013 never died, with previous fans from their teens now advancing into their twenties with as much enthusiasm as they did when EP Delicious dropped in 2012. The excitement was tangible, with loyal fans decked in denim and fur reacting raucously to their favourite indie bangers with crowd surges, moshpits, climbing on shoulders and crowdsurfing from the outset. It was a strange feeling, an experience which wavered between nostalgia and catharsis; feelings of “this is amazing” but simultaneously “wow, I am far too old for this.”
Drawn-out bangers such as ‘World Pleasure’ and their cover of Binary Finary’s ‘1998’ went down an absolute treat, as did crooning classics ‘California Daze’ (which Koisser joking introduced as “a new one”) and ‘Float Forever.’ Although well received as always, it’s all well and good to tour your old songs, but with so much time passing, I was hoping that we would be treated to a new song or two, not just a replica of a gig that I had seen numerous times. Despite this, the band did seem genuinely overwhelmed by the response to what could potentially be called their comeback – “it’s like being reunited with old friends,” Koisser says lovingly. A sentimental night it was – but if Peace want to convince us that B-town is back for good, we need a new set of songs to vibe to in our watermelon-print tees.
Steph Green
(Image: Bad Luck Magazine)