Not
to be confused with 1990’s dance act, Grace are in actual fact
a ‘power indie pop’ five-piece hailing from London. I caught
up with front man John Paul Jones (or JP as he likes to be known).
Grace have been Grace for two years, “We were at art colleges,
and we all met up, but James our guitarist came later. We actually got
signed without a guitarist, and then auditions got him in. We were in
a band called ‘Morocco’ before; we were terrible back then,
really down-tempo and crap.”
Named after an ex-girlfriend and a Jeff Buckley album, it’s no
surprise that JP cites Buckley as one of his biggest influences. “Musically,
I’d say biggest influences are Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, Bloc Party
and The Killers. Also, you know, everything, like every day is a big
influence, that is almost more important than the influence of a songwriter.”
The band aren’t doing things by half either and JP seems to be
taking it all in his stride “We’ve released two vinyl singles,
‘Wonderful’ is out now and we’re releasing ‘Slowly’
on CD at the end of May and our album’s out in June. We’ll
be doing a few live dates around the country, but not a massive tour,
we’ve just come back off tour. We’ll be doing some Uni gigs,
in big cities, like Manchester.”
Having met at art colleges, it’s obvious the boys are all fairly
artistic, but JP has been interested in music from a very early age:
“I remember when I was a kid, and it was snowing and I blagged
it off school by pretending I was will.
My Mum had to come and pick me up and I was really, really young, like
six or something, and it was when singles came out on cassette and she’d
bought ‘Chris Isaac – Wicked Games’ and she played
it in her car and I remember it was so beautiful, and I remember just
loving that song.”
Whilst chart success seems imminent for the band, JP still seems grounded
and thankful for the opportunity: “The best day of my life was
when we shot our first video, it was amazing. We shot it outside, out
somewhere in the countryside and I remember saying, “This is the
best day of my life”. Also, when we finished mixing our album
in New York, we went to Central Park with a bottle of vodka. It was
amazing, it was hot and we’d never been to New York, that was
an amazing day,” the front man explains.
Although JP remains down to earth, he’s still got pretty big ambitions
for the band: “I’d most like to support Bloc Party, I’d
really like them to do a remix of one of our songs, I want us to be
the biggest band in the UK!”
by
Lucy Tant
