Peace - Wraith

Every time Peace release a new song you’re convinced they’ve just reached their benchmark. Nothing could top ‘California Daze’ surely, as it balanced anthemia with mature songwriting? Then again ‘Follow Baby’ sounded more arena-packing and festival-ready than anything the B-town band’s contemporaries were producing. But it was topped. And ‘Wraith’ might just be the next step doubters didn’t deem Peace capable of taking.

Swimming within these addictive three minutes is an awful lot. For starters, we’ve references to house (frontman Harry announced himself as a frequenter of his hometown’s house clubs in a Neu interview several months back). There’s the odd section that encompasses funk and Foals-esque bongo claps and muted guitars. All that, and a closing ten seconds that could easily have been sampled from a pinball machine in a dingy downtown arcade. There’s more substance to this than your average band’s dodgy after-show rider.

And tying it all together is something Peace have showed themselves up as experts of producing: One heck of a chorus. It jumps right out at you, like a sudden sea change in the mood of a crowd, as they go from slight bop to all-out sweat-filled frenzy. And make no mistake: We’ll be seeing these frenzies right across the country once Peace release their full-length proper in 2013. If your most memorable moment in a nasty-smelling, unbearably sticky festival tent next summer doesn’t involve this lot, we’ll be damned, and so will ‘Wraith’, for it deserves to soundtrack such unforgettable experiences.