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We're just weeks into 2013 and super cool indie band Peace are already having a great year. From playing their first gig in the early hours of New Year's Day to placing in the BBC Sound of 2013 poll, it seems that Peace are ready to take 2013 by storm.
We checked in with lead singer Harrison Koisser for a bit of a catch up, discussing setting off fireworks inside venues, the cyclical nature of guitar bands and - surprisingly enough - being a Belieber...
Hi Harrison! You started 2013 with a huge show at London's Koko for Club NME. How did it feel to start your year with such a big show?
Good! It's like start as you mean to go on, so we were quite into the idea of playing our first show within twenty minutes of the year, and it being our biggest ever headline. It set the pace.
And if you could achieve just one thing this year, what would it be?
To meet Justin Bieber. I'm so into Never Say Never. I watched it last night for the first time ever and I'm just inspired. I just want to go and achieve my dream.
So are you a Belieber now?
I think I definitely am.
Who are the most unlikely band are that have had an influence on you?
The Spice Girls. We were actually talking about our tracklisting yesterday for the album and I was comparing all our songs to songs on Spice and then saying what order they would've been in, if they were Spice. And then, you know, I took a long hard look in the mirror.
So on the other end of the spectrum, who are the best band of all time?
Probably Led Zeppelin. I've got sort of weird Zeppelin artifacts around the house, and I talk about Zeppelin non-stop, I've loved them since I was a child. My dad has one of John Bonham's snare drums, which we actually used on our album, and some signed stuff and records. And I've got a really old Zeppelin tour tshirt as well, which I love.
Watch Peace's new single 'Wraith' below
Haim, and other 'guitar' bands, are now working different influences into their sound in 2013. Do you think bands need to be more diverse with their sound to stand out nowadays?
I never thought about that, actually, but it's kind of true. I think it's almost like channelling a completely different sound through the idea of playing with a conventional set-up. It's interesting for me, because that's like what we always wanted to do - although I don't know whether we actually achieved that.
There's a lot of interest in guitar bands being 'back'. Do you think it's because people are sick of commercial pop - or are guitar bands just much better now than they have been in recent years?
I don't know, maybe a mixture of the two. Things move in cycles - like everything does, I guess. I mean, I get bored of one thing and move onto another and move back to the first thing all the time - people do that with music as well. But maybe it is just that all these bands are really good, which they are. Maybe that's it. I'm not sure really, I think that needs to be studied. Get scientists involved.
Peace are one of the big new bands of 2012 bringing guitars back to the mainstream
The Delicious EP has a really diverse sound. Is the album going to share that or be more defined?
It's definitely more like one sort of sound. It makes more sense between the songs and the whole album has more of a sound - it's more us, but it's definitely still diverse in the way the songs are written, and the influences are still really different.
So what else can you tell us about the album so far?
There's a lot of new stuff, and some songs you might recognise. It's very good... It's the average track length.
No ten minute tracks like '1998'?
No, there's no ten minute songs on it because we did that, and then we decided not to do it again. But there is one song which has an album's worth of content in a three minute forty song - or it might be four minutes long, actually. It's like if you condensed a twenty minute jam into the shortest it could possibly be, there's a song like that. I think it's the first song on the second side.
Listen to the ten-minute epic 1998' below
When picking a band name, did you ever consider the difficulty in Googling 'Peace'?
No, that was something that came after, I didn't think about it. But then people were like, 'You can't Google you,' and I just pretended that was on purpose for a bit - that I wanted to do it as a statement or something, but really I just didn't think about it. I was too absorbed in the real world at the time and now I'm back on the map.
You're still quite a new band, you haven't been around that long. Can you tell us a fact about Peace that no one else knows?
Let me think. I'm trying to think of something that no one else has ever heard. Oh, I once shaved the sides of Doug's head and he had like tiger stripes in them. And it looked so bad, but I thought it would look really cool. His hair was really long, so he had like a really long mohawk thing with like tiger stripes in the sides of his head. I convinced him that it would look really cool and he was like, 'Yeah, okay,' and he looked like some like time-travelling nut god or something, it was horrible. I was like, 'Dude, this looks so cool,' but he literally looked like a warlord.
Speaking of heads being shaved, fans have shown up at shows with 'peace' shaved into their hair. What's the weirdest thing a fan has done so far?
Someone once bought tshirts for all of their family which is nice, actually, it wasn't that weird. They bought, like, loads of tshirts and asked us to sign them.
It would be a bit weird if they all wore them at the same time.
Yeah, that's what I thought, imagine them all wearing them. But it's also really nice! There has been people who try and kiss us and stuff - they jump on us, which is a bit weird. People have broken into our backstage room or followed us into our dressing room, and they've got in. It's all a bit weird.
And on that note, we'll say goodbye. Peace's single 'Wraith' is out now.
Peace are on the NME Awards 2013 tour this year. Dates are below. For more information visit Gigwise Gig Tickets.
