PEACE – Happy People
aaamusic | On 12, Mar 2015
Peace’s ironically titled Happy People asks the question: ‘where have all the happy people gone?’ The answer from any fan is quite definitely, ‘back to your first album…you know, the good one’.
Peace flooded the indie scene of 2012/13 with vibrant and optimistic charm, riding alongside a wave of bands that mingled 60’s nostalgia with festival-bright pop songs. The Birmingham quartet’s EP was Delicious and was followed by an equally notable full-length album that fittingly left everyone In love. The latest edition to the Peace discography stands oddly displaced, with a band left clearly jaded from a faded musical youth.
Happy People starts strongly with tracks such as ‘O You’ and the already overplayed singles ‘Gen Strange’ and ‘Lost on Me’ embodying everything Peace. These songs are exciting, with confident choruses, layered twinkling guitars and diverse mixes of clock-ticking, hand-clapping variety. Songs such as ‘Someday’ and ‘Under the Moon’ stand out as post-party classics, the former a stripped back acoustic number, with atmospheric backing and the latter a swinging bluesy piece made for a neon smoked bar scene.
From this point the album departs from its early high standards, combining strong bass melodies with poor Pet Shop Boys vocal imitations (‘I’m a Girl’ & ‘World Pleasure’), repetitive and often dull tracks. Happy People is clearly an album that could have been great, but any of early excitement gets lost in an 18 track pool of should-be B-sides.
Sadly it seems the band have grown from their upbeat tone of infectious enthusiasm and diluted their selling points with anxiety ridden tour-bus blues. Songs such as ‘Happy People’, ‘Fur’ and ‘God’s Gloves’ all attempt to create something meaningful and even sensitive, through contrasting lyrical content and tonal highs, but everything sounds unfinished, one rehearsal away from reaching the deserved potential.
As an album the songs don’t transition cleanly and it all starts to sound the same when listened to in one go. Though standing alone one could easily see the back 9 gaining popularity through TV – they are very advert friendly.
Happy People is by no means a poor album, at least half of it is great, but it does fulfil all cynical second-album expectations, with disappointing results.
