You would be mistaken if you thought an interview with The Pigeon Detectives meant the band had time on their hands or were letting out a huge sigh of relief and slouching, collectively, for the first time after nearly a decade of making music together. Not just known for their innumerable, catchy melodies, memorable lyrics or, let’s face it, bizarre name, the famous five-piece are as renowned for their dedication to producing great music as they are for their ever-moving and shaking attitude. As NME once said: “they’ve played at every festival known to man”, and the quintet are still doing exactly that. Another tour, another album; The Pigeon Detectives, it would seem, just don’t stop.
“There’s no point sitting at home”, was guitarist Ryan Wilson’s response as to why the band have worked so hard, toured so much, and produced so many albums regardless of their relatively recent crash-landing on the music scene in 2007. “We’re really happy with what we’re doing”, he added.
But with the ever-changing popular music taste, it has been hard for The Pigeon Detectives to keep their signature sound whilst competing against the new music dominating the charts.
“The radio’s turned its back on a lot of guitar music and it’s going down a different route”, Wilson commented. “A lot of people think guitar bands have died and that’s a little bit sad to know.” Nevertheless, the band have vowed to stay true to their musical principles: “One thing we’d never do was sell out – start writing dubstep songs because that’s what’s popular at the moment. We just won’t do that.” This dedication and continuation of their signature style, along with their mesmerising on-stage presence and reputation for producing consistently successful tracks over the years, is what has kept both them and their fans coming back for more.
In the beginning, back in 2007, competition was tough. The Pigeon Detectives were up against what seemed like hundreds of half-washed-skinny-trousered-tousled-haired indie rockers: Razorlight, The Kooks, The Fratellis, The Libertines, The Strokes, to name but a few. “All them bands were huge at that point”, Wilson commented, but more so than most, the Pigeon Detectives have stood the test of time; and with a platinum-selling debut album, Wait for Me, closely followed by second album Emergency, the band secured their place in musical history and produced the third and current album, Up, Guards And At ‘Em!.
But why, or how, did they survive the dog-eat-dog world of the indie-rock band? How did these local lads from Leeds keep afloat in the ruthless music industry, when so many of their rivals fell? “A lot of the bands were successful, but I think Razorlight’s biggest problem was their lead singer. A little bit of a fool. But we’re a very close band, we’re like brothers. We own our own record label, Dance To The Radio, so we’ve always kept our heads above water.”
This security has granted the financial security and flexibility for the band; they can be their own bosses, which is something so rare in such a ruthless, pressure-cooker of an industry. As a result, they have chosen a very different summer schedule. Having played at Reading and Leeds Festivals last year, and with the absence of Glastonbury this year, the band are trying something new; they are soon to embark on yet another tour, with pit-stops planned around England’s green and pleasant, well, sea.
Starting in Scarborough on the 14th May the band kick off the opening night of their Summer By The Sea Tour before visiting various destinations up, down and around the country’s coast.
This tour of their current album Up, Guards And At ‘Em! will finish just before the 2012 festival season begins. Unsurprisingly, the diary is getting increasingly booked-up, with performances planned for Playfest in June and Y-Not Festival, in August.
In any spare minutes over the forthcoming summer months, the band plan to finish off their fourth album, which they hope will be ready for release in September of this year. “This album’s really going back to our roots but it has a really good mix of old and new”, Wilson remarked, when asked about the overall sound and inspiration of the album. “You’ll really like the catchy, indie-ness of it but it’ll still sound like everything you heard in 2007”.
When recording the newly formed yet still-unnamed album, to guarantee it was their absolute best, the band decided the best thing was to experiment with a multitude of different sounds and, quite simply, write an obscene amount of music to choose from. “Since album number three we’ve written around about 25, nearly 30 or 40 songs, then we whittled that down to 13 or 14 that are actually good”, commented Wilson.
2012 is another jam-packed year for The Pigeon Detectives. And, as long as they survive Scarborough, it’s fair to say this band will be around for a while yet.
