Peace are a great band. Their first two albums soundtracked my final year at uni, and when I saw them live it was so boisterous I nearly lost my shirt. But for some reason their third album left me cold, and I moved on to other obsessions. 

Until last week. Standing on a station platform in the morning drizzle, I absently pressed play on ‘Kindness is the New Rock and Roll’, and the tunes hit me like an Avanti West Coast express. Try it for yourself. 

Lead singer/chief songwriter Harry Koisser bares his wounds on the album, particularly in ‘From Under Liquid Glass’, which details the torture of clinical anxiety. But from out of the darkness comes hope. The album has a fierce joy in it. Written across its 10 songs is a bruised but certain conviction that true power, true freedom, is found in the simple rebellion of being kind – that kindness is, in fact, the new rock and roll. 

That’s why Peace’s third album had to wait until 2025 to get hold of me. Because right now, wherever I turn, I see leaders glorying in their own lack of mercy, their lawlessness, their disdain for the poor, their viciousness towards the weak and scared. I see swathes of the global population voting for them, gleefully asking for more. And worse – much worse – I see many Christians riding on their coat-tails, throwing kindness and mercy to the wind in the name of cultural victory. 

This seven-year-old album has a simple message to speak to Christians in 2025: the ends can never justify the means. If we abandon kindness and mercy for the sake of victory or orthodoxy, we have missed the point. Kindness is not weakness or dithering – it’s the strength to put others first, which was the great example of Christ (Mark 10:42–45). 

If Jesus’ mission had been to stamp a particular set of behaviours onto the province of Judea, you know he had the power to do it (Matthew 26:53). He could have swung into Jerusalem, forced the unrighteous to bend, called fury down on the unclean and the outcast. Instead, he went to the cross and let his own blood be ripped from him for the sake of those very sinners – and us.  

His people wanted a political-military leader to give them victory. They didn’t get one. Likewise, if we find ourselves smiling when selfish leaders punch down, perhaps we need reminding – kindness is the true rock and roll. 

Josh Hinton
Josh is Head of Communications at LICC and writes regularly on music and the arts for Connecting with Culture.