Many bands fall under the loose umbrella of indie rock, but very few have cultivated such a unique appeal as Peach Pit.
The Vancouver-based quartet have embedded their warm and intimate sound within listeners’ moody playlists all over the world, becoming a staple within the genre. With their recent album Magpie, Peach Pit are touring again, returning to the country the titular bird calls home.
The band are playing at The Forum on March 5 – a step up from the Northcote Theatre, which the band sold out rapidly last year on their first Australian tour. It must feel pretty good to sell out big venues like that, but frontman Neil Smith and guitarist Chris Vanderkooy tell me the highest highs were perhaps from back when the band first started.
Check out our gig guide, our festival guide, our live music venue guide and our nightclub guide. Follow us on Instagram here.
“We had the album release show in Vancouver at this dive bar called Pat’s Pub and we sold out the show. It was 100 tickets sold,” Smith says, recalling the band’s Sweet FA album release in 2016.
Back home, the two gathered in Smith’s bedroom, eagerly counting the stack of cash that lay between them.
“I think we had like, 500 bucks, and we were literally throwing the money in the air. We were like, ‘We’re fucking rich,’” Smith says. “Honestly, the sold-out London show might not even be as good as that first 500 dollars.”
I ask them about how it felt when they first got paid to play. “I know what story you’re gonna tell,” Smith says to Vanderkooy with a somewhat nervous laugh. Vanderkooy then recounts when the band duped an oyster festival into paying them 700 bucks – more than double what they’d ever been paid before.
The scene they describe is hilarious: a group of flannel sporting dudes splurging their spendings on oysters and alcohol, ecstatic with that special post-gig feeling. Then, the festival’s promoter approached them, and a drunken Smith replied, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you paid us 700 bucks!”
Needless to say, the promoter wasn’t very happy.
Fast forward to 2025, almost a decade later, and Peach Pit’s gradual rise to fame hasn’t taken away from the core of friendship and artistry the band began out with.
Vanderkooy says when the band started, rehearsals were just “Friday night with the boys”. Today, it’s still the same, but instead the band enjoys a larger rehearsal space fitted with a sofa and a TV.
“We had the best time rehearsing for these shows because we were just able to kind of like half hang out, half play,” Vanderkooy says.
Even as the band’s sound has ventured down different sonic routes, it’s been anchored by the dynamic between the members. Smith’s tender vocals are still tinged with his signature melancholy, Vanderkooy’s guitar riffage continues to bounce from wild solos to atmospheric and sparse notes, drummer Mikey Pascuzzi’s grooves carry a familiar sense of buoyancy and Peter Wilton’s bass continues to innovate.
But Smith’s lyrics have started to evolve. As he and the others emerge from life’s tumultuous twenties, his lyrics depart from writing about what’s immediately in front of him to focus on more abstract ideas.
Magpie, Smith explains in a YouTube comment on the song’s video, came from a poem he’d found surrounding superstitions regarding the bird. One magpie meant sorrow, two signalled luck, three for a wedding, and so on.
“I came up with this sort of shady character, Magpie, that lives in the gutter and who’s always boozing and chasing a high and feels like he’s got his shit together because they’ll still let him sit at the strip club bar. In some ways it’s who I felt I might end up like if I never quit drinking,” Smith says.
In the end, the goal for Peach Pit is to continue riding the wave. It’s certainly an idyllic lifestyle – playing music and earning a living from it – but any preconceived ideas of what a famous rock musician’s life would look like are quickly challenged by taking one look at the band.
Donning straight-fit denim, loose cardigans and plaid flannels, they really are just a group of chill dudes, and that’s probably the most Peach Pit thing about them.
Nine years, 2.2 million monthly listeners and four highly acclaimed albums later, they’re still the same guys who were gorging on oysters in celebration of being paid to play music.
To get tickets to see Peach Pit at the Forum on March 5, head here.
