Harry Koisser: 'Music Is My Therapy'

Since releasing their first album, In Love, in 2013, British rock four-piece Peace have been steadily building an international following with their exhilarating and uplifting mix of guitar-driven indie pop, bolstered by the success of songs like the dreamy pop of California Daze and the upbeat, euphoric funk of Lost On Me. Happy People is their ambitious follow-up less than two years on from and largely written during the tour for that first album. Vocalist and songwriter Harry Koisser says leaving the country for the first time to tour was a life-changing experience. “I’d always lived in this bubble of what I knew and all I knew before was taking girls around the town centre and getting drunk and going to nightclubs. Then suddenly I’m playing shows and going to the other side of the world and it was quite eye-opening, just to the fact that I realised there was more to life than just having a good time in Birmingham city centre, so I think that was a major change.”

"I’d always lived in this bubble of what I knew and all I knew before was taking girls around the town centre and getting drunk and going to nightclubs."

When it came time to write lyrics for the new album, Koisser says he felt a need for a more focused approach to the writing process, something he admits he’d been somewhat lackadaisical about on their previous efforts. “I thought about the lyrics a little bit more on this one and I really wanted to improve. I wasn’t unhappy with the lyrics before but my writing style had been sort of irresponsible. I’d kind of just write lyrics on walls or on my hand or just lie and say I’d written them and then write them in the vocal booth when we were recording. With this album, I wanted to try and write all the lyrics and get them done and it’s a bit more enjoyable and quite fulfilling when you’ve got a song written before you record it. You can kind of listen to it and decide if you’re into it or not so I guess I’m just a bit more conscious about everything.”

While songs like O You and Under The Moon reflect the more optimistic impression of the album title, the twist is that many of the songs deal with darker subject matter such as songs like Perfect Skin that deal with themes of image, anxiety and self-loathing. While Koisser admits there were darker turns on this album, he says writing the material helped exorcise a few demons of his own. “I like the idea that music is kind of a cure and a therapy and you know for me it always has been. I like the idea that you can write these songs that are about dark things, or you know things that seem dark to us, and then have the music sounding quite uplifting and quite sort of like colourful and the sort of juxtaposition of that I’m really into.”