I’m not sure if anyone here has read my writing outside of OnlyBands, but you might be able to tell even from our sense of humour, that I’m not exactly a sunny sorta guy. Which is why I want to impress upon you all that I’m being completely genuine when I say that being young and in a band with all your mates, playing shows around the place, is probably the most fun you’ll ever have in your life.
And this is exactly what came to mind when I first listened to Melbourne pop rock four piece Peach Fuzz. I couldn’t actually believe that I hadn’t heard of them All This Time. Combining the contemporary indie rock riffs of bands like The Strokes with the sweet melodies and grooves of the sixties and seventies, Peach Fuzz sound as sweet and crunchy as the fruit that you just racked off your neighbour’s tree.
The band have had crowds jumping for joy and singing along with every word for a few years now and it seems like the only direction for them with their current trajectory is up. Young and bursting with energy, I thought that they were an all too appropriate choice for our first day at BIGSOUND, and ventured to the Content House to find out a bit behind how the melba is made.
Peach Fuzz are:
- Lucinda Gray (Vocals)
- Ben La (Lead guitar, vocals)
- James La (Drums)
- Lewis Rich (Bass)
1. It’s Day One of BIGSOUND and you presumably just got here this morning. How are you feeling ahead of your first set?
OB: You’re playing The Brightside Outdoors. Have you seen it before?
Ben: We haven’t seen it yet.
OB: That’s the Big Boy stage. Then you’re playing Crowbar which is also the other Big Boy stage. I would expect a crowd. With this in mind now, how are you feeling?
Ben: We were feeling fine. Now we’re mortified! (laughing) No, we’re so pumped. We’re so excited.
Lucinda: Yeah, super stoked. It’s all of our first time here as a band and also just watching as well. So we’re super excited to be here.
OB: Have you played an industry showcase event like this before? If so, how did it go?
Lewis: We had a Live Nation Next On. We did the next on program that was in March or so. Back in Melbourne at the Palais. That was pretty special. They set up the stage on the actual stage and it was really such a great setup and a good experience.
OB: Funnily enough, that actually is one of my questions.
2. You guys have recently played the Palais Theater. What was it like to be up there?
OB: Yeah I’d guessed it was part of some showcase but wanted to hear it from you guys.
Ben: Yeah, it was Next On which was their program where they get emerging artists to basically play these massive venues that they probably wouldn’t be able to play in ages and so we were just walking in the Palais being ‘Like whoa, this ain’t our usual’.
Lewis: It’s surreal like knowing all the great names that have played there over the years.
Ben: And you should have seen the way they had the charcuterie board. Meters looong.
Lucinda: Oh yes!
3. These won’t come out until after the festival is over, but what or who are you on the prowl for at BIGSOUND 2026?
Ben: Yeah, I mean we’re definitely looking for a producer, a label-
Lewis: A booking agent, booking agent is top of the list.
Ben: Yes, a booking agent!
OB: Are you guys booking yourselves or do you have someone doing it but it’s not really their main thing?
Ben: Our manager is a GOAT and she does basically all these roles in one. But we want to, you know, give ‘em a break.
OB: I work with a lot of managers who are also like doubling as publicists as well. It’s a lot of hats to put on.
James: Hats off to that!
OB: What’s her name again?
Ben: Imogen Rennie from Ivy Music Group, she also works with Jordan Acker as well. Both our managers are awesome.
OB: Shoutouts to them!
4. In the space of four years you’ve gone from your first show to playing Australia’s biggest industry event. What’s one piece of advice that you’d like to give your younger self about being in a band?
OB: I didn’t find a whole lot of previous press for you guys but I can see that you’ve been at this since 2022, because that was your earliest post on Instagram as well.
Ben: Oh you’ve been scrolling for a long time!
Lucinda: I’d probably say keep practicing confidence. I think that’s definitely been a big factor in our stage presence and our stage craft and just yeah, being friends with each other as well.
Ben: Generally being a nice person, connecting, making sure you’re being as supportive in the industry as people are to you. Taking the pressure off, not judging yourself so much after gigs. Like me and James are brothers and our dad comes to all of our Melbourne shows, films them, and we just watch them the next day and I’ll be like ‘I messed up that one thing and messed up that too’ and then I’ll just be like ‘Who cares?’. As long as you’re there having a great time, we’re all best friends on stage having the best time, that’s what matters.
5. Being in a band at your age means that music has almost certainly been a massive part of your life. I’m assuming at least some of you come from musical families. Did you all grow up together or did you not meet until you were looking for band members?
Ben: Well, I met James at a very young age, birth. And Lewis I’ve been like friends with since school. (Turning to Lewis) I think I met you when I was fifteen and you were eighteen. Maybe a bit before that? Fourteen, seventeen? And Luci we all met in 2022.
Lucinda: Yeah right after I turned eighteen I came and saw these guys playing when I was able to get into the bar.
Ben (laughing): You make it sound like we’re uncs, I’m a few weeks older than you.
Lucinda: But it was like days after my eighteenth birthday. I was like “Yes, I can finally go and see these guys!” and then yeah, I just kind of weaseled my way into the band ha-ha-ha.
OB: What’s your favourite part of making music together?
James: The spontaneity, the creativity, coming together, playing (together) sometimes live, sometimes (just jamming), always collaboratively. Yeah, just the fruition of ideas and it’s an exciting thing every time.
Lewis: Just working together for a common goal. Just always kinda getting to ride the wave together and you know heading in that direction and we get to have each other’s company along the way with all the ups and downs and yeah, the support is always there.
Ben: The money. Nah, the lack thereof.
[Everybody laughs]
OB: I’m assuming at your ages that you’re planning on pursuing music as a career, what was your earliest memory of wanting to be in a band?
Ben: Well, in school actually James and Lewis were in this cover band before me and I got so jealous and I wanted to start another band. They did some originals yeah and like Lewis and James told me they got paid like what, like fifty bucks each at this gig?
Lewis (laughing): Plus a sandwich I think. It was like during the school lunchtime. But yeah, I remember ‘cause I went to this jazz gig one night and some random guy gave me fifty bucks when I was like sixteen and then we were like “Oh we’ve got to start a jazz band because you can actually make money doing it”. Little did we know ha-ha-ha, but yeah we were just doing like jazz songs and then rock covers and stuff and then it all kind of morphed into one thing.
OB: Yeah, well with fifty bucks and a sandwich that’s probably more than some people get paid at the moment.
Lucinda: Yeah even more than us nowadays ha-ha-ha.
6. You’ve got a bit of a throwback seventies sort of vibe with elements of soul rock, in fact that’s straight up what Cow Song is. Are these genres what you all grew up listening to? Or was it something you discovered that you wanted to add to your music when you first came together as a band?
Ben: Oh, it’s definitely, at least for me, with the guitar and everything like that it. It just listened to like dad rock like and The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, all that but then in the last couple of years we’ve been expanding and really turning our heads towards like a pop rock thing.
And even just not being so like close- not close-minded, but I used to only listen to guitar music. Now it’s so inspiring especially in the Australian scene, there’s so many like (different genres), like you’ve got indie pop, you got like soul, you’ve got rap. You know there’s so many different genres that can influence us and that do influence us. And our tastes are so different too but we all love making the music we do and that’s that.
7. Now that you’ve had some time to look back on your second EP, Isn’t It Obvious?, how do you feel about it like a year later? Is there anything you’d do differently on your next EP or even LP?
Lucinda: I think writing more collaboratively which we have been doing on our latest singles and we’re sort of leaning a bit more into the pop genre as well like still with the guitar driven riffs and stuff like that. But I think also being a bit more cohesive. Like we all love the EP so much, both of our EPs that are out. But it will be nice to put something together from start to finish that’s like a full sort of body of work rather than feeling like just a bunch of songs.
Ben: With that EP, we kind of just threw together songs that we collated over the years, but it wasn’t like we sat down and were like ‘Okay, let’s make six songs’.
OB: Have any crowd favorites emerged from those songs?
Ben: At the moment Fall Right Back To You is having a big moment. We make social media videos of like the riffs and stuff and it’s been so awesome seeing people like learn the riff, people in like France or Asia have been learning the riff and I was like ‘Whoa, I wrote that in my bedroom when I was like nineteen or twenty’, and it’s pretty surreal. So even like at our shows, people are dancing around to it and reacting. We start playing it and are like ‘Oh my god’, I love that so much.
OB: Are there any songs that are very challenging to play live?
Lewis: Oh that’s a good question. Probably I would say What Do You Want From This? is the hardest just ‘cause of how it’s in a bit of a different tuning. Yeah, not for me. I don’t know, what do you guys think?
Ben: Yeah, well we do have such high energy shows so in terms of hard to play I think it’s What Do You Want From This? It’s always at the end of the set and we give it all of our leftover energy and we have to switch guitars for a different tuning and we want to make sure we end that set on a high and we’re dancing so we are sweating our minds out. Probably that one.
8. This is your platform now. What’s one thing that you want everyone in Australia to know about you and your music?
Lucinda: One thing? I dunno ha-ha-ha.
[Everybody laughs and has to take a moment to think, each of them hoping they other will answer until Lewis draws the short straw ha-ha-ha]
Lewis: The one thing would probably be that we just want people to have fun. We just want people to enjoy themselves, not take ourselves too seriously, when people listen to our music, we just want them to have a smile on their face. We’re not trying to be too like serious or moody any of the time. We just want to make good music that will resonate with people and you know take them to a more nostalgic or happy time in their life I guess.
OB: Love to hear it, I thought fun would be the answer!
Fun. Now that’s a word we’re hearing less of nowadays (even if I did just mention it in the intro). The whole world seems very serious and it’s made many of us rather moody or just straight up surly. When I first listened to Peach Fuzz, I could definitely tell that there was a wistful longing about their music for a time where things seemed more carefree.
Even in the time that Peach Fuzz have been doing this, the world and music has changed a lot. So a young rock band getting the crowd jumping and singing along, as well as introducing a whole new generation to the sounds that made popular music what it is today, is great to see.
Peach Fuzz are on the rise and if BIGSOUND was anything to go by, they’ll be packing out Crowbar and The Brightside again the next time they come to Brisbane. Soon enough you’ll have to Jump The Gate to even get in!
Cheers to James Latter (@jvmeslatter) for coming into clutch for all the photos in this article! You can give Peach Fuzz a listen below and make sure to follow them on the socials to make sure you know when the tree next bears fruit:
