Features Track By Track: Peace - In Love

It’s no secret that DIY’s Class Of 2013 alumni Peace’s first long player has got us a little bit over excited around these parts. It’s one of the most exciting debut records that we’ve heard in years. Recorded in a matter of weeks with producer Jim Abbiss - who previously worked with the Arctic Monkeys and Adele on their first offerings - the Birmingham quartet have produced a truly vital record.

Having fallen head first for the album, we could think of no better plan than ring up frontman Harrison Koisser and get him to spill all the details on each track. Which is exactly what we did.

Higher Than The Sun

I remember when Olly, our A&R guy, he was like, wait, it’s a Primal Scream cover? I didn’t know the Primal Scream song, I felt really bad. I heard about that after we’d recorded it. We recorded it about halfway through doing the album, and it was the first song that was really new, that we hadn’t played live loads. We didn’t know the song, so we experimented more.

Follow Baby

Ollllld song. Well not old, but one of the first actual songs that we wrote. The first time that we recorded it, we didn’t have any money, and we were getting free studio time off people, and it was recorded in a few different studios, with a few different people. And then ended up being put together, mixing it, because we didn’t have any time or money. So it was really hard to put together. So the old version, when I hear it, I’m hearing like five different studios and loads of people. And that’s cool, but with the album we wanted to record it all in one room. It just made sense. I really like the first one, but it sounds a bit like… when were doing it at the end of 2011, beginning of 2012, it just seemed a bit… stale? No, not stale. I don’t know, I just wanted to redo it.

Lovesick

I wrote that song at my mate’s house, just playing four chords, and it just came out of nowhere. It was written in fifteen minutes, the whole song. I think you can tell, because all the lyrics are just like so simple. I recorded the chords first, and just the structure, just like chords on the computer. And then it was like, shit, I’ve got an idea for the chorus. And then I just wrote it, all in all fifteen, twenty minutes to write the whole song. Except one bit, which is at the end of the middle eight, there’s like, a weird chord change. And we did that in the garden of Chapel Studios, because Jim [Abbiss] was like, you should do something more interesting at the end of the middle eight, because it’s really simple. And he was like, it’s really good, because it’s really simple, and then we changed the chord and he was like, that’s it.

Float Forever

That’s the quiet song, but that has my favourite thing on it. At the end, there’s loads of piano with loads of reverb on it. Which I like. That was something I wanted to do, record piano, because there was a grand piano in the studio. And I’m really bad on piano, so any piano bits take me a few hours to do. Yeah, it took me a long time, but we got there in the end.

Wraith

Originally it was a jam song that we used to play, and we just looped the riff. And then, just shouted random words over. And then we put a chorus in it when were recording demos at some point, and then it stuck and that was that. Like something from the Boogie Nights soundtrack. Really sleazy funky. I wanted it to sound like ‘Trampled Underfoot’ and ‘Superstition’. We listened to those in the studio before recording ‘Wraith’, and we were going to put a club part on it, but we didn’t in the end.

Delicious

It’s got the best second part, it goes into a different place in the second half which I really love. We did that randomly in the studio, it never used to have that on it. It was really short, and we were like, let’s just go there. It’s probably the last think I wrote before we went into the studio - except ‘Toxic’ which we wrote in the studio. It’s not a cover either.

Waste Of Paint

We just played it over and over and over, we looped it for so long in the studio because it’s really fun to play. And there were bits where Jim would just loop the groove bits, and do this dance for like, fifteen minutes. That was the funnest thing to record. Fun song!

Toxic

I went to see a voice teacher, a wonderful vocal specialist, coach type - I don’t think she likes being called a vocal coach actually - teacher. She’s amazing. I went to see her before I went into the studio, and she said that she always gets bands shipped to her before they go into record or go on tour or something. She’s amazing. And she said if I start having trouble with my voice, I need to go outside and just run for as long as you can. One day I went out and I just ran, for ages, because it gets your lungs going, helps your voice. While I was running for no reason, I just had that chorus. So when I was in the studio, I did an acoustic demo of it, and sent it to my management where like, yeah, record it. Marathon song. Montage.

Sugarstone

I’ve no idea. I can’t remember writing that song. It must’ve come out of nowhere. I know how it goes, it just seems like it’s always been there. I just can’t remember writing it or recording it. I know we definitely definitely did. I always have memories of recording songs, but I literally can’t remember recording that at all.

The only thing I can remember is when I recorded the choruses, I’d got a really bad cold, actually when I recorded the whole vocals. And I’ve got a really blocked nose when I’m recording it, and you can hear it, my voice is really bad. I thought oh no, this is really bad, and I had to warm up for ages, and I was smashing pints of hot ginger and honey shit. And trying to do it. For me, it sounds like I’ve got a cold.

California Daze

Lovely lovely little song. It reminds me of holding the stick board for ‘Face’ [Harry had a job for a couple of years where he used to stand outside Birmingham’s Bullring advertising a local club night]. The guy who runs Face, he’s really really cool, so it was just fun because you’d be with your friends all day, having a laugh, swilling some cider and go out after. It’d be all good.



Peace’s debut album ‘In Love’ is out now via Columbia.