During the Southampton leg of their current UK tour, Dan Flynn and George Doel caught up with Indie-wunderkinds Peace in a corridor within the depths of The Joiners to discuss a variety of topics, including time travel, The X Factor, and naked men doing the crab…
The Guardian called you the future of Indie; do these sorts of accolades and titles put you under pressure?
Doug (Guitarist): Correct. But we’ve seen the future and it all came out true, so its fine. We’re timelords you see, in the future no one wears clothes and there are no yachts.
We’ll bear that in mind. Your sound has been compared to Wu Lyf and The Maccabees, do you aim to sound like these bands?
Harrison (vocalist): It’s not really an intentional thing if its true, we never really set out to sound like anything, and we just make the music that we want. The similarities are probably just a result of growing up in a similar musical climate, with everyone taking their reference points from similar places.
Are there any bands that you do aim to sound like?
Harrison: We want to sound like Keane. The future of guitar music is… the piano.
Is there any types of music you dislike as a band?
Doug: Um, not particularly, who would listen to music they dislike though, you know?
What about Reggae?
Harrison: I was thinking about Reggae earlier actually, and I was like ‘Reggae isn’t actually that bad’. In its time, it must have been great, it was important wasn’t it?
Doug: Important in the history of the world.
Are there any new artists that you are currently excited about?
Harrison: There’s a lot of good bands from London at the moment, like Splash, Spector and Swim Deep.
Sam (Bassist) There’s a great band from Birmingham called Superfood. Temples, Jaws… Great new bands for 2013.
Is this the first time you’ve been to Southampton?
Doug: No, we went to Unit once actually!
What do you think of Southampton?
Sam: We haven’t really seen that much of it, but it seems great. We got kicked out of Southampton actually…
As in banished?
Harrison: Yeah, we were wondering hotel corridors at three in the morning and had to leave, so we drove to London. We haven’t seen a great deal of it, but hopefully tonight that will change!
Is it better than Birmingham, where you come from?
Harrison: No (laughs) I’m Just kidding, it seems great here. What bands come from Southampton?
We have Frank Turner and Band of Skulls, maybe someone from Busted? Not a lot. Anyway, what’s the best venue you’ve ever played?
Harrison: The best venue we’ve ever played was this club in Prague. We went down loads of floors and everything was made out of marble and it was really cool.
Sam: Brixton Academy was brilliant as well, obviously.
Do you reckon the Joiners will be up there?
Harrison: Maybe, it’s down to all you guys. It sounded really good in the sound check though.
On the flipside, what’s the worst venue you’ve ever played in?
Doug: We’ve played some shitholes! I don’t know though, it’s hard to think of one in particular.
Um, where was your first gig, that must have been pretty small?
Harrison: Weirdly it was in Oxford and wasn’t shit. It was a warm up for our first actual gig with Tame Impala, which was a great opportunity; I got it through having a friend who was in the business.
Doug: But to answer you’re question about the worst venue, which we haven’t, I don’t know.
That’s great, thanks. What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you onstage?
Doug: I was sick out of my nose once.
Harrison: I was sick in my mouth last night actually! In Cardiff, my guitar cut out for a whole song so I was just strumming along with it. Our friend chilli did the crab on stage once, which was also crazy, then we tried to join in. The same guy also just got naked when Mystery Jets were playing.
You’ve only got one EP released thus far, what can we expect from the show?
Sam: We’ll play the whole EP plus some b-sides. All stuff that people have heard before.
Doug: Maybe with some deleted scenes.
Harrison: ‘Wraith’ (new single) was always the song we played that no one had heard, but now its been released that’s changed. We’re keeping the album stuff till next year. It would be nice but we’ve got until March when its released and we’ve got the NME award tour before then, so we’ll test the stuff there I expect.
How is the album going?
Harrison: We’ve finished recording it, it just needs mixing then we’re golden.
Doug: I need to learn the songs as well.
What’s the significance of the watermelon on your EP cover? Why not any of the other fruits?
Harrison: I was at a party where we were drinking from watermelons and an Australian friend of mine was like ‘aren’t watermelons great? Your cover should just be like watermelons’. I thought this was great, so I spoke to the artist and was like ‘I’m bringing watermelons to the table’ so he ran with it and came back with some cut up watermelon pieces, and the cover was born. I think its up for an award.
One of your lyrics is ‘we spit blood at the sun, we spit blood at the ocean’, what does this lyric mean, and which one do you prefer?
Harrison: I tried to sing it ‘spill’ but I don’t think it came out, sorry about that. I guess it’s just the whole thing in the song about the infinite feeling of being able to do anything. My favourite is probably Ocean because it’s easier.
Sam: You would get blinded by the sun and it’s so hot.
You have a song called ‘California Daze’, have any of you actually been to California?
Harrison: No, but we’re going to LA in a few weeks, so we’ll be able to answer it then, so no comment for now.
Doug: Ask us in two weeks.
Two of you are brothers; do you use personal jokes to isolate others?
Harrison: Which two do you reckon are brothers?
(Dan guesses correctly, then also correctly guesses who is older. Sam and Harrison are brothers, and Sam is older)
Sam: We don’t but we should definitely come up with one, I love isolating people. Maybe a handshake?
Do you ever get bored of the standard interview questions?
Harrison: The thing is that you are going to get similar questions because that’s what music journalism is like. Its up to us to have fun and not spit out the same answers again and again, which we try not to, so music journalists of the world, relax!
As an “indie” band what are your feelings towards the X factor?
Harrison: We got religiously into it when it was Rebecca Ferguson and Cher Lloyd.
Doug: I’m completely in love with Cheryl Cole.
Harrison: The idea behind X factor isn’t actually that evil, I mean it dominates the charts and pisses off every band, but its just a show.
So what are your plans for the future? X Factor?
Harrison: We actually got an email from Syco saying they were interested in us. There was a moment where we considered it but we ultimately stuck to Columbia. I’d love to meet Simon Cowell, it was very flattering that they were interested.
Doug: So for the future, X Factor Judging and touring.
Thank you to Jan Vin Kobal for providing pictures from the show.
