Since their 2013 debut, mercurial Midlanders Peace have become the Marmite of the music world. But on the day their second album, Happy People, is released, the debate over their indie authenticity and shameless pop pilfering dies in the face of a furious moshpit, teenage adoration and the spectacle of a band determined to seize the mainstream attention they crave.
It’s the quartet’s imitative sound that’s got them in trouble and for a visual aid, look no further than frontman Harry Koisser. His artfully ruffled hair and hip-skimming black leather jacket are textbook Libertines, but the striped flared trousers that flap around his ankles are straight out of Jarvis Cocker’s Britpop dressing-up box. It’s a look that shouldn’t work, but like the cheeky, cheesy shuffle of opener Higher Than the Sun and the band’s dense cover of Binary Finary’s trance hit 1998 – which they turn into a noodling prog-blues opus – it does so brilliantly.
Peace sustain an impressive power throughout a 90-minute set that’s full of ambitious new songs accompanied by strobe lights and flickering visuals. The band’s tight, focused sound is at once familiar and strange, which, together with the sweat rising from the hormonally challenged sold-out crowd, makes for an intoxicating atmosphere. “Is everybody all right?” Koisser asks. “Does anybody need a towel? A glass of water?”
A hose might be a better idea as fans rush at each other during anthems-in-waiting such as Lost on Me, Perfect Skin and I’m a Girl, while the lighters come out for the twinkling hymn California Daze, which Koisser dedicates “to all the ladies. And the fellas.” His bassist brother Samuel ventures centre stage to steal the spotlight during the sprawling World Pleasure, but ultimately it’s the cascade of Peace’s perfect pop choruses – delivered by Harry Koisser with effortless passion and roguish charm – that makes resistance pretty much futile.
• Epic Studios, Norwich, 12 and 13 February. Box office: 01603 727 727, then touring
