It’s BBC SOUND OF 2013 MONDAY! (What we’ve not gotten to, anyway!) And look, here come the worst groomsmen ever!

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[4.08]

Katherine St Asaph: From the Monster Manual: “Infused with the necromantic essence of the Shadowfell, a wraith is a spirit bereft of soul and body — a hollow vessel containing minimal personality and knowledge, if any.”
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Iain Mew: I liked their previous single “Bloodshake,” and “Wraith” initially seemed like another decent example of almost danceable Brit indie. Usually I go with Friendly Fires for the comparison, but let’s go further back and call it Clor-core. Or not. Anyway, the problem came when I listened to the lyrics and realised that “blow me like a floating feather” (to someone addressed as “sugar”) was meant to be seductive and wasn’t sure whether to be more embarrassed or disgusted by how far short they fall of managing that.
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Patrick St. Michel: Did the British rock scene really need another Foals, except one with lines like “blow me like a floating feather?” 
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Doug Robertson: Wherever there are festivals, there will be mid-afternoon slots on the main stage, and whenever there are mid-afternoon slots on the main stage there will be bands like Peace, offering the sort of uninspired, flatpack sound that will happily slot between any number of similarly genre-blinkered bands and is almost offensive in its inoffensiveness. Deep in their hearts they must realise that they’ll never be headliners, that they’ll never be someone’s favourite band and that they’re so uninspired they might as well be a covers band. The best their chosen path can offer them is a semi-prominent slot on the second stage and the tempting possibility that one of their songs might one day be used to soundtrack a coming-soon trailer on a mid-tier cable channel. It doesn’t really seem worth the effort.
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Part of me doesn’t want to be cynical about Peace’s NME buzz or placement in the BBC’s Sound of 2013 longlist. I want something compelling to burst out of the Italo-house keyboards, polyrhythmic guitars and anticipatory pauses that the band have cobbled together in lieu of a song. But “Wraith” needs more kitchen sink, less everything-but-the-.
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Hazel Robinson: I have surprised myself by liking this. It’s partly because it sounded very slightly like Battles at the start. I’m not sure I really approve of a Strokes-lite (or indeed, really believe it can exist), but there’s a good grasp of rhythm here, the riffs are catchy, and as moderately irritating as his voice is, there’s a lush enough production that by the time the piano house bit kicks in I’m easily being carried along by it all.
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Alfred Soto: They can syncopate guitar lines and their dynamics are a notch more ear-catching than bands with this name and this sound, but what else is in the box?
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Brad Shoup: That riff’s a wormy thing, and doubling it multiplies its burrowing power. Get a better singer, and they’d be debauched wallpaper for your mid-’70s period piece.
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Will Adams: I suppose the only thing to do with a line like “blow me like a floating feather” is to cover it up with guitar scuzz and hope no one pays attention.
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Ian Mathers: They really took all the wrong lessons from the first Foals album (and that’s why this is much worse than anything from the second Foals album), right? I don’t like his voice, either.
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Jer Fairall: The playing is tight and tense, but the vocalist has neither the flourish to hit the arena stage nor the required amount of insolence to frighten or titillate, and it all drifts by comfortably enough to leave the band’s name feeling rather ironically unironic.
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John Seroff: Inoffensive with designs on something a bit deeper, as if Train and The Cure got in a fight and Train won. The anthemic qualities prune off the more interesting flowering buds of underlying possibility, but that catchy guitar lick carries so much water I was still tempted to give it a pass. That was before I saw the disaffected and frankly thematically confusing assholery of the video.  Are Peace (feels like I should be typing “Peace” there) aping Duran Duran’s MTV-era Brown Sugar sexploitation visuals along with their sound? That’s a reach at best and more likely unnecessary apologia for what amounts to little more than bad behavior from the latest iteration of whiny bad boy Britpop. At least the gentle ending leaves a nice taste on its way out the door.
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