Prokofiev's Opus: Peter And The Wolf

Deep beneath the ever-so curious pub-fronted space that is Farringdon’s Betsey Trotwood, in a dark and misty air where one can feel the Hammersmith and City line tubes literally ride above them with only minor brick-layering to divide, three chums who go under the name Peter and the Wolf sit in front of Gigwise, all good and proper to tell the story of their past and hopes for the future…

Sergei Prokofiev’s composition, ‘Peter and the Wolf’, is a story about a boy who ignores his grandfather’s warnings to save his animal friends from a wolf (Thanks Google). The band, Peter and the Wolf, have gone through many a stage to find their sound and identity, disregarding what’s front-covering the music press to create a natural blend of acoustic-pop with not a single boundary in sight.

Meeting and assembling at university in the city of Liverpool, lead singer/guitarist Marc Sunderland lived two floors above drummer Donna Dosanjh, who reveals "We started hanging out and writing songs, playing open-mic nights at a couple of bars." The trio was complete after double-bassist Hugo Harrison met Marc studying for a degree in Music.

After years of what Marc describes as "lots of fun in my bedroom", practicing and rehearsing in the gear up to numerous gigs far and wide, a mini-album was released earlier this month through Elbow front man Guy Garvey’s Skinny Dog Records. "We played in Manchester a few times, and some of the label came to see us" states Marc, "But when we played at The Crypt, which is under The Metropolitan Cathedral, the whole of the label came down, and after the show they gave us the indecent proposal."

Featuring six tracks, ‘Storyteller’ is filled with brief charming slices of light-strumming bliss. "There wasn’t a sound we tried to create with it. We just had so many songs and it was just a matter of deciding what to go on" says Donna. However, one common aspect of the Wolf’s resonance is despite an upbeat and melodic bliss of light strumming, rather dark lyrics feel the need to direct the songs into slightly gloomy places. Mini-album track ‘Tommy’ contains the lyrics, ‘What have I done? What if I break down and kill someone?’, on top of a sweet-sounding tune, but it does create an interesting blend nonetheless. Hugo tells us, "It is quite a usual Peter and the Wolf thing to do that, like we’ve got a song called Euthanasia." So does that come naturally? "Yeah I suppose it does. It’s not like we think 'Oh this is too poppy, lets make it darker with the lyrics', but maybe we need to write sad songs with positive lyrical content" Marc jokingly replies.