Review: Peace – The Bodega – 7 February 2015

Saturday night saw indie band PEACE play to a sell-out crowd for the 3rd successive night at Nottingham venue The Bodega. This was their final night of a three day mini stint at the venue ahead of the release of their sophomore album ‘Happy People’ on the 9th of February. This was my third time watching the band; seeing them progress from a support act, to a mid-sized venue headliner, to a band who can sell out three successive nights in the same city. It’s been a really fascinating journey to watch, for not only has their support grown but also their stature and sureness as musicians. From the first note it was evident that the band was full of confidence; kicking off with a few first album singles to get what was a young and enthusiastic crowd into the mood to dance early on.

The set was comprised of a pretty even split between old tracks and new tracks; the old singles providing welcome respite between the more unfamiliar songs. Whilst the new songs sounded promising, they perhaps lacked a bit of the sparkle that previous hits such as ‘Bloodshake’ had. This impression could have been due to the unfamiliarity with the songs and not necessarily due to the quality of the tracks; full judgement will have to wait until the release of the album.

Particular highlights of the set include the aforementioned ‘Bloodshake’, ‘Follow Baby’ and ‘Califronia Daze’, all of these songs encouraging mass sing-alongs from the crowd. The pick of the new tracks would be ‘Money’ which actually sounded a lot more impressive live that it does on the studio version.

Instrumentation was tight throughout and special mention must go to band member Samuel Koisser for providing the bass lines which underpinned these killer tunes; this was thoroughly impressive. Aside from the bass lines Samuel Koisser provided a further highlight of the evening when he proceeded to play through the encore whilst sitting on top of the tall amps to the side of the stage. The only minor disappointment being that he didn’t stage dive off of them. This was a great gig and it will be really interesting to see how Peace progress from here as a band.

Review by James Kellett