At The Center of Something Sweet: Peach Pit on Favorite Birds and Fleeting Youth

A quick PSA: now that the fruit is in season, you the reader must get outside and enjoy a peach in the sun if you want to get the full experience of living. It’ll change your life, like hearing “Alrighty Aphrodite” for the first time. Friendship and music group Peach Pit formed in Vancouver, Canada where they shared in the experience of growing up and discovering well-made local music. After much success with their debut album released in 2018, Being So Normal, the band has ridden the wave of notoriety with one another, the whole way. In this interview I sat down with the guitarists, Neil Smith and Chris Vanderkooy to learn more about the group’s dynamic and growth.

SLUG: How did you all meet? Have your friendships and bonds had any effect on your success as a band? 

Smith: Me and Chris [Vanderkooy], we met when we were in high school. I was a year older than Chris and we kind of knew each other. We had mutual friends, but we didn’t really know each other very well and it wasn’t until Chris and I were in our late teens to early twenties [when] we were out of high school that we became friends. We kept running into each other in the neighborhood. We live on the ocean, so there was the government wharf, like the dock down in the marina was the spot where we would hang out in the summertime and just go sit there, smoke a joint and go for a swim. That’s how we became friends.

Vanderkooy: I’ve been friends with Peter [Wilton], our bass player, since we were 5 and we met Mikey [Pascuzzi] probably around the same time [Neil Smith and I] started becoming good friends. It definitely makes a big difference in the band when you’re friends first. We’ve noticed the trend in a lot of bands where they have ended up being in groups together just because they play music, and if that’s your reasoning for getting into a band with someone, it’s obviously a very important one, but for us, we were hanging out, going camping and smoking weed on the dock before we ever played music together. So that was the foundation of the relationship. 

SLUG: I feel like that definitely comes through, not only in your music but in your visuals. You can tell that you guys are a very tight knit group and it’s one aspect that I really love about your guys’ band. It’s very heartfelt to me to hear about you guys having been friends for a long time, since 5 years old, gotta love your hometown homies.

Smith: We’re lucky that we’re all buddies, because this job would not be as fun if you weren’t with your friends.

SLUG: As a Canadian band, are there any Vancouver artists you have looked up to that inspired your interest in a career in music? 

Smith: When we were in high school, there was a new radio station. It was an indie rock radio station, it was called “The Peak.” Especially when we were in high school, it was very much centered around Canadian indie rock and local music. Some bands that we really looked up to were bands called We Are the City, Said the Whale, Mother Mother. There’s a bunch of bands that were heavily played on the radio that were quite popular in our hometown.

Vanderkooy: It was cool because I grew up with this assumption of like, “Oh these bands are big everywhere,” but really, at the time, the Vancouver music scene was being supported by this radio station and it made these bands feel huge because they could play big rooms in Vancouver. They would get so much promotion from this radio station. It really showed us what it could look like to play big shows and especially being bands from Vancouver, I think just made it seem possible. 

SLUG: I read that your most recent album title Magpie was inspired by seeing the birds themselves and then the poem “One for Sorrow, Two for Joy.” Can you explain a bit more of the significance of the bird and do you often look to poetry for lyrical inspiration? 

Smith: I wrote down “Magpie” in my notes app where I write all of my song ideas. I really just thought it sounded like a nice song title. I wanted to write a song called “Magpie” and it wasn’t until after I got home that I found this old poem about good and bad omens that come from whether you see one magpie versus two magpies. That’s pretty much as deep as it goes. Honestly, the song is really about a character [I made up] called Magpie and it’s about a guy who’s super down on his luck and living in the past constantly. I think at the time I was trying to envision myself years down the road, later on in life, if I had continued drinking in my 20s — I quit 7 years ago. So I was just envisioning maybe what my life could have been like. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’ll write a song and then I’ll say in an interview that it had to do with the poem and then it becomes the reason why the song was written even though it’s not really true. 

SLUG: Okay, real, that makes sense at least to be like re-inspiration, I get that sometimes where I guess it didn’t really have the significance, but you decide that it does. I have a follow up question. Do you guys have favorite birds? 

Smith: Maybe raven. We live close to the mountains in Vancouver at the top of Mount Seymour, which is one of the ski hills near our house in the summertime. You go hiking up there, and there’s lots of ravens up there and they’re just super cool. They’re huge. They’re just massive crows. They’re super smart. I like ravens. 

Vanderkooy: There’s a couple herons that live near my mom’s house and she’s named them Bruce and, I forget what the other one’s name is, but anyway, those are always cool to see fly. 

SLUG: How do you embody The Beatles in this record and who’s who of the Fab Four? 

Smith: Fuck, I don’t know if we do embody The Beatles. I think we’re just really big fans, so sometimes we’re trying to write songs and hope that we can arrange things in a unique way, which is something we’re inspired by from their records. As far as us being like the members of the Beatles— 

Vanderkooy: The only easy one is Mikey [Pascuzzi]. 

Smith: Yeah, Mikey [Pascuzzi] definitely is Ringo for sure. He’s the drummer, he’s the goofy goofball of the band.

Vanderkooy: No one can be mad at Mikey. If there’s any drama going on, Mikey’s just peacefully staying out of it. 

Smith: We have a very good, not toxic band dynamic, so I don’t think I can really compare any of us to John, George, or Paul. So I don’t know. I’m really bossy sometimes, so maybe that’s some Paul McCartney cause I watched the Get Back documentary and realized that guy was fucking bossy,but he was also working way harder than I’ve ever worked on any music ever, so he was allowed to be that way. 

SLUG: Yeah, they’re coming out with a new biopic. How do you feel about the casting? 

Smith: I think it’s good, I’ll give anything a chance. I’ll watch anything Beatles related so I’m excited to see it. Who’s playing Paul? Is it [Paul] Mescal? 

SLUG: Yeah, I think so. 

Smith: He’s way too [cute], but I guess young Paul McCartney was really cute. 

Vanderkooy: All ages of Paul were very handsome. 

Smith: No, not all ages. I don’t know, 80s fucking mullet Paul is not that— 

Vanderkooy: He was just living in the time. He’s just like a dad with a mullet. 

SLUG: Many of your songs, “Tommy’s Party” and “Little Dive” perfectly capture the small town party scene. What about those hometown memories stand out to you? Does it feel more carefree or more melancholy? 

Smith: Thinking about being in your early twenties, becoming an adult, and feeling like you’re an adult, even though you’re still a kid and you don’t really have any life experience. Everything when you’re young is just so exciting, like the first time you go out to a bar with your friends, I would get a freaking adrenaline rush from doing the simplest activities and pretending you’re all grown up even though you’re a kid still, and those sort of feelings from partying in your twenties, they don’t last forever and eventually they become negative feelings. I would say definitely they’re looking back into the carefree life we were living in our twenties, as opposed to now where we’re super jaded and nothing is exciting or fun anymore. 

SLUG: Youth is a very interesting drug. 

Smith: There’s something so beautiful and amazing about it and very fleeting as well, because a lot of that stuff doesn’t last forever. 

Vanderkooy: I’ve got this snapshot in my head of when me, Peter and another friend moved into the top half of the house that Neil and a couple of our friends were living in already, and just waking up the first morning of that house and walking downstairs into Neil’s apartment and he’s watching Django Unchained and making eggs, and we sat there watching that movie and ate eggs and I was like, “This is fucking awesome.” Yeah, it just felt so cool. 

Smith: We were lucky we got to spend a lot of time together when we were kind of growing up.  So we have a lot of those core memories from when we were young. 

SLUG: If you could write a song or soundtrack for a movie, what would the title and plot of that movie be? 

Smith: We want to write a movie, that’s our next goal in life is to write a movie and then make a soundtrack that’s the album for it. That’s a lofty goal of ours is to make a movie with our friend Lester [Lyons-Hookham], who’s the music video director for all of our music videos. I could really see us writing some sort of coming of age movie, maybe loosely based on some of our life experiences living in a big house together. We all lived with a bunch of our friends in a house together in Vancouver. 

Vanderkooy: One movie that comes to mind when you talk about that is Francis Ha, really incredible movie and actually before we even started this conversation about writing a movie, I’ve always kind of felt that movie and “Tommy’s Party” have some similarities where it’s a breakup song, but it’s actually a friendship, and drifting apart song, more than something romantic. That movie encapsulates that feeling really well and that energy. And I think “Tommy’s Party,” we’ve been playing it for years. It’s always a set closer and that does the same thing. If we could write a movie that comes close to capturing that feeling, we’d be super happy with ourselves. 

SLUG: I love that. I love Francis Ha a lot. Would you guys do teenage coming of age or? 

Smith: No,  like in your twenties. I love the stories that are about people who are trying to figure out how to actually live on their own and stuff like that. I feel like when you’re 20, 21, 22, this is my experience, I felt so grown up, even though now looking back on it I definitely wasn’t. I still don’t feel like I’ve fully grown up, so I love those sorts of stories.

SLUG: I’m sorry, I have to do it, but what’s the title gonna be? 

Smith: Title? We can’t tell you. We actually already have the title, but we can’t break it. 

Vanderkooy: Yeah, we can’t break it in the interview right now. 

SLUG: That’s totally fair, I’ll sit and I’ll wait.

For more sticky sweet summer fun, listen to the Peach Pit’s latest album Magpie and get tickets to their tour here. 

Read more interviews with national artists:
Blondshell On If You Asked For A Picture and Masculinity
Black Country, New Road’s Charlie Wayne On Continuity