Third time unlucky. After mentioning that I'd interviewed the Pigeon Detectives a couple of times, I was asked to get them again for Sheffield/Yorkshire music website Square Indie. I felt so bad going back; like they don't see enough of me in their audiences already. However all went well and they seemed fairly relaxed.
I had to edit this heavily because the word count was considerably shorter than I'm used to, which was a bit annoying because I wanted to keep in all their banter and jokey quarrels with each other. Ah well, but I think it reads more intelligently as a result. This interview scared me a bit because it was the first I'd done since early December, almost six months previously.
Dave said he was pleased I left in the bit about his domestic skills because it would impress his girlfriend. I haven't quite worked out if he was being sarcastic.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Square Indie http://www.squareindie.co.uk in June 2008
(c) Square Indie
THE PIGEON DETECTIVES
@ Portsmouth Guldhall, 27th May 2008
I’m backstage with four-fifths of the Pigeon Detectives, in a small room decorated with scattered songsheets. They’re due onstage in just over three hours. Singer Matt Bowman is absent; probably receiving the physiotherapy he’s needed after badly injuring the ligaments in his leg, ironically during a performance which included This Is An Emergency. Guitarist Ryan Wilson is sitting by the window softly strumming an acoustic. Drummer Jimmi Naylor is confusingly also on guitar, while bassist Dave Best is on the iron because guitarist Oli Main can’t quite work out how to un-crease his shirt.
The Pigeon Detectives are currently touring to promote their second album, Emergency. Everyone keeps asking why it’s been released just a year after their debut. “Because we wanted to,” says Oli.
“It’s just because the last God-knows-how-many years, it’s become the norm to have the two year break but we just thought sod it, we can write the songs, let’s do another album,” says Ryan.
The recording studio was in the Welsh valleys and the band relaxed by quad-biking and clay pigeon shooting. “We just didn’t want the distractions of any major city so we just went away,” says Ryan. “And it’s a really reputable studio. Oasis have recorded there, Stereophonics, Black Sabbath. The View are recording their second album right now in there. It had a really good history and good equipment, so we thought, why not?”
Oli has been labelled as the band’s chief songwriter. “Apparently. No, I am.” Are there any themes running through Emergency? “Not particularly. I don’t know what half the songs are about anyway. It’s not like a happy album or owt like that.”
I think it’s a bit more bitter than the last one. “I wouldn’t say bitter, I’d say maybe cynical or something like that.” Is that because you’re a cynical person? “No, I just had a really bad mood for them three weeks we were doing it.”
If you listen to the album’s close, you’ll hear Jimmi get insulted. “I thought we’d finished recording. I was on the phone for about an hour to my bird and come downstairs and I was like, what the fuck’s going on? I went in and started singing when everyone started to whistle, and then I just thought I’d carry on and Matt went ‘Oh, you bell-end!’”
Although their lively, punchy indie rock has won the band masses of airplay and plenty of excitable fans, some critics haven’t received Emergency as warmly as Wait For Me, with the Guardian dismissing its appeal as ‘Granada Men and Motors indie.’ Are the band aware of this slating? “I don’t think I should read it,” says Dave. “I tend to get a bit angry.”
Jimmi’s seen it: “I stayed in a hotel and ordered paper for next morning, fucking opened it up and it absolutely tore into [Emergency]!” he laughs. “I wouldn’t take that to heart.”
“Have you heard the album? Do you like it?” Ryan asks sternly. “That isn’t friendly is it Ryan!” chides Dave.
Oli’s reading what it says about him in the aforementioned review. “Apparently I ‘feel obliged to take someone down a peg or two, which he does using his reliably devastating oh-so technique, ‘you think you’re oh-so clever’ or ‘oh-so petty and so pretentious.’’ None of them were my lines.” We suggest he sues, but he ain’t fussed. “It’s a funny read.”
The Pigeon Detectives won’t be taking it easy this year. “I guess one of the big aims is just to do well outside of the UK,” says Oli. In the pipeline are various festivals, shows in Europe, a month in America around September time, and then another UK tour towards the backend of the year.
How’s the current tour going? “It’s going pretty good actually. I hear every night’s sold out, bar one,” says Ryan. “Crowds have been good so can’t complain really.”
Did you think it would be cancelled when Matt hurt his leg? “We thought it might be delayed. We had to cancel Ireland, we had a couple of gigs up there. We’ll be back again at some point,” says Ryan.
What songs are getting the best audience reaction on tour at the moment? “Take Her Back and I’m Not Sorry.” Out of the Emergency tracks, I’m Not Gonna Take This and You Don’t Need It are going down well, though it always takes people a while to get used to new songs. “There’s a clear difference between the songs they know and the songs they’re kind of listening to,” says Jimmi. “But they’re still giving good cheers after.”
“I think we knacker our crowd out quite early on, like we proper hammer out some big songs,” says Ryan.
The Pigeon Detectives’ walk on song for the Emergency tour is The Who’s Baba O’Riley. The band find it harder to choose their intro music than to pick their setlist.
“You can’t have it build too early, it’s got to kick in as the band walk out,” says Ryan. “And a lot of songs that you find don’t kick in strong enough. We had us last intro music [Telstar, originally by The Tornadoes]. It was quite cool, with all helicopter type things going on at the beginning.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath. “I burnt me finger,” says Dave, who’s still ironing Oli’s shirt. “I feel like singing I Want To Break Free by Queen.” You’re not wearing girly clothes under that coat, are you? “Wouldn’t you like to know…”
“Suspenders,” suggests Oli.
“You need to look after Oli because he comes very scruffy on tour so you need to iron his clothes and hang up his underwear,” retorts Dave.
“I’ve been wearing these same clothes since Cambridge I think,” says Oli. He then realises some items may have stayed on since Manchester, five days previously. He inspects his white t shirt. It looks fairly clean. “It’s not!”
What’s the best and worst thing about being a Pigeon Detective?
“David Best is the worst,” says Oli. David Best looks unimpressed.
“The best is playing big gigs, playing festivals and making albums. The worst is travelling, getting on very early plane journeys,” says Jimmi.
”I think the best can also be travelling as well,” pipes up Dave. “Seeing all different places.” Including every service station in Britain, according to Oli.
“When we used to be in our Transit van, that’s all we used to be doing, going to service stations,” says Jimmi. Occasionally shoplifting from them, because they had no money. “I’ve nicked pasties before, Ginster’s pasties.”
“It’s like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to feed us, the poor,” Ryan confirms.
“We’d paid for that many pasties that we deserved some free ones,” says Dave. Fair enough.
The band is widely and commercially successful now, but do they still see themselves as part of the Yorkshire scene?
“[The New Yorkshire scene] were just a bit before us,” says Ryan. “Black Wire, The Cribs, Forward Russia and stuff were all part of that but we just missed that boat and so we’ve never really classed ourselves as in that New Yorkshire thing. We got tagged a little bit about it, like “it’s another band from Yorkshire,” like Arctic Monkeys and Milburn.”
“It’s not a scene though, it’s not like we’re all friends or anything,” says Oli. “We hardly know any of them bands. The only bands we know from Yorkshire - we only know them a little bit - are Sunshine Underground, Kaiser Chiefs and Forward Russia. It’s not like we all go out to Joseph’s Well for drinks and stuff.”
Are there any local bands they can recommend? “The Wallbirds, they’re from Doncaster. Although we don’t like Doncaster,” says Ryan, remembering a recent play-off result that saddened Leeds United fans. “They’re pretty good. Grammatics, but I’ve not seen them properly.”
One of the highlights from the West Yorks gigging calendar this year has to be the two sold-out nights the Pigeon Detectives played at Millennium Square in their home city of Leeds. “It were good, weren’t it,” says Ryan. His bandmates consider this a slight understatement.
“First night, it felt like a moment, when we looked at crowd,” remembers Jimmi.
“Summat happened with the PA. So it cut the intro music,” says Ryan. “The crowd started booing, and then we kind of walked on to boos. Not aimed at us!” The first night’s supports proved popular, but the Pigeon Detectives think the second night was a better gig, performance-wise for them.
“We’d not really played that many gigs leading up to that, like now we’re in the middle of a tour and you kind of get used to it. So I got quite anxious and nervous,” continues Ryan. “I think Matt gets nervous.”
Moving on, and lucky Jimmi gets the special Mystery Prize question card which wins him a bottle of Jack Daniels. He’s very pleased. “Thank you very much. I’ll drink that tonight. We’ve had Corona for a while and we’re getting a bit sick of that. We’re moving to Peroni.”
“A lot of bands have weird stuff, but we’re just beer and cider and vodka and red bull,” says Ryan.
Weird stuff? “A lot of bands have a different spirit for each band member, like Kaisers have. Peanut likes rum so they get him a big bottle of rum every gig,” explains Dave, who is now tapping away with a pair of drumsticks.
Do you have any pre-gig superstitions? “We generally stick our iPod on and listen to a load of music before we go on,” says Ryan. “Some bands do huddles and high fives. We’re not like that.”
“I always walk out first,” says Jimmi. “It feels weird if I don’t.” Troublemaker Oli decides he’s going to walk out first at that night’s gig, like he did in Manchester “because [Jimmi] took his time… You can’t stop me.” The drummer makes it clear he won’t let this happen.
“I’m not going to start walking on too early! But it were weird when you walked on, I don’t know why. It didn’t ruin my gig. No-one can ruin my gig.”
Eagle-eyed gig goers may have noticed that night, as Baba O’Riley started, Jimmi suddenly lurched in front of the curtain before scurrying back behind it. It was almost as if one of his bandmates had pushed him on early for a laugh…
The Pigeon Detectives released Emergency on 26th May.
Showing posts with label the pigeon detectives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the pigeon detectives. Show all posts
Monday, 16 June 2008
Gig Review - The Pigeon Detectives @ Astoria
I was going to this gig anyway, so was asked to do some work instead of just enjoying myself. I believed the published version was edited down a bit, but this is the full length blah.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Square Indie http://www.squareindie.co.uk in March 2008
(c) Square Indie
The Pigeon Detectives / Black Kids / The Rascals / Grammatics
@ Astoria, London 7th Feb
When you’re sandwiched against the barrier and the call of ‘Let’s go fucking mental!’ goes up behind you, either it’s going to be a good night or an unscheduled trip to A&E is just around the corner.
The NME/Shockwaves gig at London’s Astoria, headlined by the Pigeon Detectives, was the first of the Awards shows to sell out and the band’s first gig since mid-December.
First support came courtesy of Grammatics, whose jerky indie pop is given a strong backbone through the imposing cello. Opening with previous single ‘Shadow Committee’, they also played ‘Broken Wing’ (introduced as their version of a power ballad). Owen Brinley’s high voice seems to float above the rest of the band and they were an interestingly quirky start for the people who had bothered to turn up early.
Next up were The Rascals, whose echoing and pounding lad rock has real potential to get a crowd hurling beer cans all over the place. It’s too early for that tonight however. Their deafening tunes contain psychedelic echoes and swirls similar to labelmates the Dead 60s. They have cracking songs although some have a feeling of ‘did I hear this one already?’ At the moment it’s impossible to mention The Rascals without also namedropping their similar-sounding mates, the Arctic Monkeys. But if you hadn’t considered them in the same breath before, the sight of Alex Turner stepping onto the stage, guitar in hand to join in music and vocal duties on ‘Is It Too Late?’ will change that. The Astoria erupted, but it won’t be the music The Rascals are remembered for tonight.
Black Kids were the scenesters’ band of the night (bright clothes – check. Korgs – check. Topshop/Vice Tour – check). They’ve travelled over from Florida for a handful of key shows to whip up UK interest before embarking on Sons & Daughters and Kate Nash support slots. They were on a mission to get everyone dancing with their optimistic, poppy tracks whose melodies pleasingly reminded me of Operator Please. Sadly the girls’ voices were almost inaudible above the music so that extra dimension was lost, but it was still entertaining.
Last year was an immense one for the Pigeon Detectives and saw them described by hosts NME as ‘band of the summer’ and ‘undisputed dons of the festival circuit’ (and ‘sexist’, but presumably they forgot to mention that when booking for tonight). Joking that The Rascals might have had Alex Turner but they had Bono hidden backstage, they played songs including ‘I Found Out’, ‘Romantic Type’, ‘Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye’ and ‘Stop Or Go’. Singer Matt Bowman pointed out this was their first gig for a few months and promptly forgot the lyrics to ‘Take Her Back’.
After spending some weeks recording their new album, the Pigeon Detectives tried out a handful of new tracks - ‘I’m A Liar’, ‘Say It Like You Mean It’ and ‘I’m Not Gonna Take This’, angrily-named songs full of a darker energy and the band’s trademark singalong choruses.
The band were high-spirited throughout, with Bowman laughing as he untangled the mic lead from guitarist Oli Main and occasionally throwing water at drummer Jimmi Naylor. The audience was equally up for it, with plenty of sweaty crowdsurfing. I got clipped on the head with a stray beer can. It hurt.
The show closed with ‘I’m Not Sorry’, though I missed half of that one because Bowman and a couple of randoms were crowdsurfing on my head. The crowd was bouncing along, I didn’t go to A&E, and it was a good night. May we see more of all four bands this year.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Square Indie http://www.squareindie.co.uk in March 2008
(c) Square Indie
The Pigeon Detectives / Black Kids / The Rascals / Grammatics
@ Astoria, London 7th Feb
When you’re sandwiched against the barrier and the call of ‘Let’s go fucking mental!’ goes up behind you, either it’s going to be a good night or an unscheduled trip to A&E is just around the corner.
The NME/Shockwaves gig at London’s Astoria, headlined by the Pigeon Detectives, was the first of the Awards shows to sell out and the band’s first gig since mid-December.
First support came courtesy of Grammatics, whose jerky indie pop is given a strong backbone through the imposing cello. Opening with previous single ‘Shadow Committee’, they also played ‘Broken Wing’ (introduced as their version of a power ballad). Owen Brinley’s high voice seems to float above the rest of the band and they were an interestingly quirky start for the people who had bothered to turn up early.
Next up were The Rascals, whose echoing and pounding lad rock has real potential to get a crowd hurling beer cans all over the place. It’s too early for that tonight however. Their deafening tunes contain psychedelic echoes and swirls similar to labelmates the Dead 60s. They have cracking songs although some have a feeling of ‘did I hear this one already?’ At the moment it’s impossible to mention The Rascals without also namedropping their similar-sounding mates, the Arctic Monkeys. But if you hadn’t considered them in the same breath before, the sight of Alex Turner stepping onto the stage, guitar in hand to join in music and vocal duties on ‘Is It Too Late?’ will change that. The Astoria erupted, but it won’t be the music The Rascals are remembered for tonight.
Black Kids were the scenesters’ band of the night (bright clothes – check. Korgs – check. Topshop/Vice Tour – check). They’ve travelled over from Florida for a handful of key shows to whip up UK interest before embarking on Sons & Daughters and Kate Nash support slots. They were on a mission to get everyone dancing with their optimistic, poppy tracks whose melodies pleasingly reminded me of Operator Please. Sadly the girls’ voices were almost inaudible above the music so that extra dimension was lost, but it was still entertaining.
Last year was an immense one for the Pigeon Detectives and saw them described by hosts NME as ‘band of the summer’ and ‘undisputed dons of the festival circuit’ (and ‘sexist’, but presumably they forgot to mention that when booking for tonight). Joking that The Rascals might have had Alex Turner but they had Bono hidden backstage, they played songs including ‘I Found Out’, ‘Romantic Type’, ‘Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye’ and ‘Stop Or Go’. Singer Matt Bowman pointed out this was their first gig for a few months and promptly forgot the lyrics to ‘Take Her Back’.
After spending some weeks recording their new album, the Pigeon Detectives tried out a handful of new tracks - ‘I’m A Liar’, ‘Say It Like You Mean It’ and ‘I’m Not Gonna Take This’, angrily-named songs full of a darker energy and the band’s trademark singalong choruses.
The band were high-spirited throughout, with Bowman laughing as he untangled the mic lead from guitarist Oli Main and occasionally throwing water at drummer Jimmi Naylor. The audience was equally up for it, with plenty of sweaty crowdsurfing. I got clipped on the head with a stray beer can. It hurt.
The show closed with ‘I’m Not Sorry’, though I missed half of that one because Bowman and a couple of randoms were crowdsurfing on my head. The crowd was bouncing along, I didn’t go to A&E, and it was a good night. May we see more of all four bands this year.
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Interviews - Christmas 2007
Another seasonal question special. This time I asked recent interviewees some festive questions for a Native.tv Christmas special.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in December 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
CHRISTMAS 2007
Greg Gilbert (vocals, guitar) - Delays
Where were you last Christmas?
In Southampton. It’s a total family time for me. I just love it. I love doing the whole cliché thing, I love being with my family eating dinner and getting drunk and sitting in front of crap TV falling asleep, paper hat on my head.
What’s the best present you received?
I got the James Bond DVD set one Christmas. The trouble is with DVDs is I have to be in the right frame of mind. I channelsurf endlessly. Sometimes I put a DVD on and think oh there must be something great on, but Bond is great comfort on lonely nights.
What’s your best and worst Christmas songs?
Best Christmas song is either Roy Wood or Slade, I’m a big fan of all those glammy Christmas, Life On Mars kind of era. I didn’t like Paul McCartney’s Christmas song. That’s not one of my favourites.
What’s your New Year’s resolution? Or have you not got one yet because we’re asking you this on November 1st?
Let me think of one. My New Year’s resolution is to try and find as many things funny as possible. I think when you find something so funny you belly laugh, there’s absolutely nothing better.
Tom Baxter
What are your favourite and least favourite Christmas songs?
You know what, I really like that George Michael song ‘Last Christmas’, I think that’s a really good song. I always feel sorry for the guys in Slade because they’re just labelled a Christmas band. The Cliff Richard stuff I don’t really like, that just drives me up the wall a little. It’s all a little bit insipid and milky for me.
How did you celebrate New Year last year?
Oh God, where was I? For the life of me, I can’t remember. The last Christmas I did, I had a house party so I was very drunk and then I had to go to Argentina the following day so I was a bit worse for wear.
What’s the worse thing about Christmas?
It’s just like a false sense of family sometimes, and I think that’s a real shame. I think sometimes particularly in this country we don’t make enough effort to just be a family. It’s all so split up. So I think that it can be quite a lonely time for people can’t it, if you haven’t got family and if you don’t get on with your family.
Do you have a New Year’s resolution?
My New Year’s resolution is just like everyone else’s, to get fit actually. I just haven’t been to the gym for so long.
Matt Bowman (vocals) and Oli Main (guitar) – The Pigeon Detectives
Best Christmas present you’ve got?
Oli: A guitar.
Matt: Pair of rollerskates.
What’s your New Year’s resolution?
Matt: Mine’s going to be smoke more. Just to say ‘Fuck you’ to those that are trying to ban it.
Oli: Smoke indoors more.
Matt: That’s for both of us, that.
What’s the worst thing about Christmas?
Matt: Buying Christmas presents. Not made of money.
Oli: I fucking hate Christmas, everything about it.
Best and worst Christmas songs?
Matt: Worst one was that Darkness effort.
Oli: Slade’s is the best one.
Matt: Yeah, obviously Slade.
What did you do last New Year?
Matt: Played a gig at the Faversham in Leeds. It was excellent. Drank lots of beer, got paid, and…
Oli: Fell over a wall.
Matt: Fell over a wall. Probably. [thinks] No, that weren’t then...
Stine Bramson – Alphabeat
Best and worst Christmas songs?
[Favourite] Wham! ‘Last Christmas’. That’s always good. I love that, I love Wham! in general. [Least favourite] That’s probably mostly Danish ones. The silly ones that don’t really have a good melody and sung by kids always.
What do you eat at your Christmas meal?
We have duck at home with everything that comes with that.
Where were you last New Year?
I actually had dinner with the friend who’s over at my place right now. Then we went to a big private party at a friend’s house in Copenhagen.
Greg Churchouse – Scouting For Girls
Where did you spend last Christmas?
Last Christmas, I was pretty much working most of it. Myself and Roy both worked in shops, so Christmas time was always the busiest time of the year. We literally got Christmas Day off, and it was working til 10, 11pm on Christmas Eve and then back to work on Boxing Day. This is going to be the first Christmas we’ve both not been working since we left school which is going to be absolutely lovely stuff.
What’s the best present you received?
Blimey. That’s a tricky one. I’d say when I was like 14 Roy persuaded to get an acoustic guitar for Christmas instead of a Megadrive. Quite lucky he did otherwise who knows what would have happened, I’d have been sitting at home, being a computer geek, as opposed to sitting in the back of a freezing cold tour bus somewhere in Scotland!
What’s your New Years resolution?
I would say I’d like to get fitter. But as I’ve never ever stuck to a New Years resolution in my life for more than, say, a day, I doubt it’s really going to happen.
What are you best and worst Christmas songs?
Best Christmas song would be ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! I don’t know what the worst Christmas song would be actually. [laughs] Roy just said ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! It’s a double-edge sword. I was personally going to go for ‘Mistletoe & Wine’ by Cliff Richard.
David Guetta
I’m going to ask you some cheesy Christmas questions, if that’s all right.
Bring on the cheese!
Where were you last New Year?
I was in Dubai.
How do you celebrate Christmas?
Really classic, you know family, tree, my wife is totally into that, she’s like really excited and we have a boy, he’s three and a half years, so we’re gonna wait for Father Christmas to come and say hello and everything.
What are your best and worst Christmas songs?
I think that is more of a UK thing because we don’t have that so much in France. I’ve seen that you have a lot of that here and it’s all a big deal but we don’t really. ‘Baby When The Light’ is number one on the airplay and it will be for Christmas. We don’t have special Christmas music. I think it’s a good thing!
Have you got a New Year’s resolution?
Yes I do. I’m going to go back to the gym, I’m going to eat healthy, I’m going to start some proper music lessons – harmony, piano lessons, percussion lessons, guitar lessons. Today I’ve done this today, it was a great experience, I’ve done this show for Channel 4 called ‘Freshly Squeezed’ and we’ve done an acoustic version of ‘Baby When The Light’. It was really exciting, I was like I wanna do this more, I need to come back home. I programme so I can play keyboard but not that good, and I want to learn how to play the real thing. That’s my resolution for next year.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in December 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
CHRISTMAS 2007
Greg Gilbert (vocals, guitar) - Delays
Where were you last Christmas?
In Southampton. It’s a total family time for me. I just love it. I love doing the whole cliché thing, I love being with my family eating dinner and getting drunk and sitting in front of crap TV falling asleep, paper hat on my head.
What’s the best present you received?
I got the James Bond DVD set one Christmas. The trouble is with DVDs is I have to be in the right frame of mind. I channelsurf endlessly. Sometimes I put a DVD on and think oh there must be something great on, but Bond is great comfort on lonely nights.
What’s your best and worst Christmas songs?
Best Christmas song is either Roy Wood or Slade, I’m a big fan of all those glammy Christmas, Life On Mars kind of era. I didn’t like Paul McCartney’s Christmas song. That’s not one of my favourites.
What’s your New Year’s resolution? Or have you not got one yet because we’re asking you this on November 1st?
Let me think of one. My New Year’s resolution is to try and find as many things funny as possible. I think when you find something so funny you belly laugh, there’s absolutely nothing better.
Tom Baxter
What are your favourite and least favourite Christmas songs?
You know what, I really like that George Michael song ‘Last Christmas’, I think that’s a really good song. I always feel sorry for the guys in Slade because they’re just labelled a Christmas band. The Cliff Richard stuff I don’t really like, that just drives me up the wall a little. It’s all a little bit insipid and milky for me.
How did you celebrate New Year last year?
Oh God, where was I? For the life of me, I can’t remember. The last Christmas I did, I had a house party so I was very drunk and then I had to go to Argentina the following day so I was a bit worse for wear.
What’s the worse thing about Christmas?
It’s just like a false sense of family sometimes, and I think that’s a real shame. I think sometimes particularly in this country we don’t make enough effort to just be a family. It’s all so split up. So I think that it can be quite a lonely time for people can’t it, if you haven’t got family and if you don’t get on with your family.
Do you have a New Year’s resolution?
My New Year’s resolution is just like everyone else’s, to get fit actually. I just haven’t been to the gym for so long.
Matt Bowman (vocals) and Oli Main (guitar) – The Pigeon Detectives
Best Christmas present you’ve got?
Oli: A guitar.
Matt: Pair of rollerskates.
What’s your New Year’s resolution?
Matt: Mine’s going to be smoke more. Just to say ‘Fuck you’ to those that are trying to ban it.
Oli: Smoke indoors more.
Matt: That’s for both of us, that.
What’s the worst thing about Christmas?
Matt: Buying Christmas presents. Not made of money.
Oli: I fucking hate Christmas, everything about it.
Best and worst Christmas songs?
Matt: Worst one was that Darkness effort.
Oli: Slade’s is the best one.
Matt: Yeah, obviously Slade.
What did you do last New Year?
Matt: Played a gig at the Faversham in Leeds. It was excellent. Drank lots of beer, got paid, and…
Oli: Fell over a wall.
Matt: Fell over a wall. Probably. [thinks] No, that weren’t then...
Stine Bramson – Alphabeat
Best and worst Christmas songs?
[Favourite] Wham! ‘Last Christmas’. That’s always good. I love that, I love Wham! in general. [Least favourite] That’s probably mostly Danish ones. The silly ones that don’t really have a good melody and sung by kids always.
What do you eat at your Christmas meal?
We have duck at home with everything that comes with that.
Where were you last New Year?
I actually had dinner with the friend who’s over at my place right now. Then we went to a big private party at a friend’s house in Copenhagen.
Greg Churchouse – Scouting For Girls
Where did you spend last Christmas?
Last Christmas, I was pretty much working most of it. Myself and Roy both worked in shops, so Christmas time was always the busiest time of the year. We literally got Christmas Day off, and it was working til 10, 11pm on Christmas Eve and then back to work on Boxing Day. This is going to be the first Christmas we’ve both not been working since we left school which is going to be absolutely lovely stuff.
What’s the best present you received?
Blimey. That’s a tricky one. I’d say when I was like 14 Roy persuaded to get an acoustic guitar for Christmas instead of a Megadrive. Quite lucky he did otherwise who knows what would have happened, I’d have been sitting at home, being a computer geek, as opposed to sitting in the back of a freezing cold tour bus somewhere in Scotland!
What’s your New Years resolution?
I would say I’d like to get fitter. But as I’ve never ever stuck to a New Years resolution in my life for more than, say, a day, I doubt it’s really going to happen.
What are you best and worst Christmas songs?
Best Christmas song would be ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! I don’t know what the worst Christmas song would be actually. [laughs] Roy just said ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! It’s a double-edge sword. I was personally going to go for ‘Mistletoe & Wine’ by Cliff Richard.
David Guetta
I’m going to ask you some cheesy Christmas questions, if that’s all right.
Bring on the cheese!
Where were you last New Year?
I was in Dubai.
How do you celebrate Christmas?
Really classic, you know family, tree, my wife is totally into that, she’s like really excited and we have a boy, he’s three and a half years, so we’re gonna wait for Father Christmas to come and say hello and everything.
What are your best and worst Christmas songs?
I think that is more of a UK thing because we don’t have that so much in France. I’ve seen that you have a lot of that here and it’s all a big deal but we don’t really. ‘Baby When The Light’ is number one on the airplay and it will be for Christmas. We don’t have special Christmas music. I think it’s a good thing!
Have you got a New Year’s resolution?
Yes I do. I’m going to go back to the gym, I’m going to eat healthy, I’m going to start some proper music lessons – harmony, piano lessons, percussion lessons, guitar lessons. Today I’ve done this today, it was a great experience, I’ve done this show for Channel 4 called ‘Freshly Squeezed’ and we’ve done an acoustic version of ‘Baby When The Light’. It was really exciting, I was like I wanna do this more, I need to come back home. I programme so I can play keyboard but not that good, and I want to learn how to play the real thing. That’s my resolution for next year.
Interview - The Pigeon Detectives (Portsmouth Pyramids)
Oh dear, back again. The Pigeon Detectives were by now sufficiently famous enough for the managing director of Native.tv to say 'Get another interview with them.' Not a bribe of rum in sight.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in November 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
THE PIGEON DETECTIVES @ PORTSMOUTH PYRAMIDS CENTRE
The Pigeon Detectives have gone swimming. Tour tedium is being broken up at Portsmouth’s Pyramids Centre, which handily has a large number of fun pools and exciting flumes right next door to where hundreds of music lovers will gather later on for the band's gig.
With no real desire to see a bunch of chlorine-smelling, Yorkshire boys in their trunks, I wander off to sit on a bench overlooking the dusk falling across the Solent and have a think before heading to the interview in the band’s brightly lit dressing room. The squishy sofa is dangerously close to becoming one of those man-eating ones; you daren’t sit too far back in case you’re lost forever. Bassist Dave Best is quietly sat next to me. I think he's tired. I don’t deliberately have my back to him, but the layout of the room is a bit awkward. Singer Matt Bowman has his own comfy chair, giving him a lovely view of the bottled water on their rider. Oliver Main and Ryan Wilson are sitting opposite me on the sofa clearly reserved for guitarists. Drummer Jimmi Naylor is nowhere in sight.
Last time we spoke to the Pigeon Detectives, they were about to play their biggest headlining show yet at Leeds Town Hall. Two nights, both sold out. The next day, their debut album was released. From being poised on the edge of successful indie, ‘that band with the funny name’ were propelled onto the Radio 1 A list, onto more festival appearances, television appearances, autograph signings and more riotous gigs. There aren’t many bands who have played three tours plus festivals and European dates this year. My boss decided they were big enough to warrant a second interview in the space of a few months, and didn’t even bribe me with a bottle of rum this time.
“Is it ready?” asks Ryan, eyeing the dictaphone. Yep. “I’m Ryan.”
“I’m Dave.”
“I’m Matt.”
“I’m… Jimmi,” says Oli. Thanks for that.
Frontman Matt is brave enough to take a question card first. Fame and recognition, something they’ve been seeing a bit more of recently. “Good job no-one else got this one,” he says with a deliberate grin. His bandmates jeer. Are you the only one that gets recognised a lot then?
“We all get recognised, but he’s the only one who’s famous,” says Oli.
“Oli’s answered the question for me then I suppose. We mostly get recognised when we’re walking out as a group. I think individually we just look like any other indie kids, but when we’re in a pack, especially in Leeds, we get recognised quite a lot," says Matt.
"But not many people have the balls to come up and be polite and say ‘Hey, how are you doing? Good luck with everything.’ Either they just grab you and then slur the word ‘PHOTOGRAPH’ at you or just kind of point and stare, which is quite rude, you know.” I saw them play before and a girl said to Oli ‘You’re hot and I want to have your children’, and he looked terrified. Dave sniggers.
”Was that that crazy girl by any chance? Who was going insane with everyone?” asks Ryan with interest.
“She were going proper mental.” Oli thinks for a moment. “Seemed like a really nice girl though, if she ever reads this.”
Ryan picks tour. At the time of this interview, there was roughly one week remaining. So far there have been about seven weeks of sold out gigs. How's it going? “It’s going really well. We’ve played various venues from 200 capacity ones to 2,000 ones all over the UK and I think every one’s been pretty good so far.”
The support acts are enjoying it, particularly the Wallbirds. Ryan trips over his tongue and calls them the Wallbergs.
”Icebergs,” says Oli.
“They’re just like three best mates on quite a big tour with us,” says Ryan. “They’re from Doncaster. They’re a bit like us when we got on tour with Dirty Pretty Things, we were just so happy to be on a good tour, and they’re just loving themselves.” The rest of the band have dirty minds, and they let out snorts of laughter.
The tour manager walks in and asks Dave to sign an acoustic guitar, which is covered in scrawls already. He does. “We’re trying to do an interview here,” jokes Ryan.
Who’s your best crowd so far? “I think Dundee, for sheer volume anyway,” says Oli.
“Dundee from the front to the back and all out to the sides was just mental,” adds Matt. “Nottingham was good but we were fucking tired. We’d had to go to London to do TV then come back again, go onstage 20 minutes later without a soundcheck so we were pretty tired, but the crowd kind of dragged us through the gig. Manchester was good, but I hurt myself halfway through.” He broke - or fractured, depending where you read it - his ankle after leaping off a speaker stack. “It’s still not right really, but it’s getting there.” Still jumping round? “Yeah. Just about.”
Dave’s plucking two strings on the guitar – high, low, high, low - in the sort of tune which evokes a funny walk. Tell me about Millennium Square. “It’s in Leeds,” says Matt. The Pigeon Detectives have sold out their first May date there and recently announced a second night there.
“Is it sold out?” asks Oli. Yesterday’s press release said Yes. “Well there you go. Someone on our forum was saying it would take months to sell out.” He pauses. “You were wrong.”
They’re looking forward to the show, which will be their biggest headlining one so far. The Square holds roughly 7,000, which they double to work out how many should attend the whole weekend. “14,000’s quite a lot,” says Matt. “It would be good to do 14,000 on one night rather than spreading it over two, that would be impressive.” Think how many of your mates you could fit in there. “Exactly.”
Dave quietly apologises. Soundcheck is going on, and one by one the band will have to leave and do some work. It’s his turn to go. The door creaks open and closes again.
“I mean we’ve watched bands there like Snow Patrol, Editors, Embrace, Kaiser Chiefs, so to finally play it in our own right…” says Matt. Have you played it before with another band?
“Yeah, we played it with Snow Patrol. That was good, but again everything with the Pigeon Detectives seems to be rushed, so we kind of walked off stage, jumped straight in a Transit van and went and played at Sheffield, so we didn’t really get to enjoy the whole Millennium Square experience.”
“You should have said limousine. We jumped into our limousine,” corrects Oli.
“I’d have been telling lies though,” says Matt. I wouldn’t have known. I’m not going to check. “All right. It was a limousine.”
The Pigeon Detectives have been playing a few different songs while on tour. A couple of b-sides, a couple of new ones. “We have, yeah,” says Ryan. The dressing room door shuts again with a noisy crash. “Played two new ones. Kind of the first half of the tour we played one called ‘Making Up Numbers’ and that seemed to go down all right. And then the second half of the tour we’ve been playing one called ‘This Is An Emergency’ and that’s been going down quite well. We’ve got a few new tracks for our new album next year, and we do kind of prefer these two more to the rest of them. I think these are the two we’ve got properly finished as well, so that’s why we decided to play them. Like I said, they’ve gone down all right.”
‘Is This An Emergency’ sounds a bit heavier. Is the new stuff a little bit darker?
“Yeah,” says Oli. “No it isn’t!” says Matt.
“Not ridiculously,” says Ryan. “'Emergency' is the darkest one definitely. The second album’s not going to be exactly the same as the first album.”
Have you started recording yet? “Not yet,” says Oli.
“Demoed a few of them, just in a studio. Spent a day doing about four songs,” says Matt. “We’re going to start recording in a studio in Wales in January.”
Why Wales and not Leeds? “We just fancied getting out of Leeds. Just somewhere to go and get away from it all and focus on the Pigeon Detectives for four weeks without interruptions and record labels and management and stuff like that. And it’s got white water rafting, quad biking…”
“Tractors,” says Oli. Tractors? “Apparently the local farmer said we could have a go on his tractor.” I hope he knows what he’s letting himself in for. The image of an indie rocker fiendishly racing farm machinery is a frightening one.
Because Dave’s busy, Matt picks his card. What bands are you listening to? “We’re listening to a lot of The Wallbirds and One Night Only, seeing as how we’re on tour with them. Love the Kings Of Leon third album. I went and watched Rufus Wainwright recently in Harrogate, I sold all my mates out and didn’t bother sorting them out guestlist. But I went, selfishly. It was really good. We’ve had the Beatles on the iPod in the dressing room a hell of a lot recently. Still love the View record.”
Any CDs that you bought recently that you can recommend? “I bought a DVD,” says Oli. That’s not a CD. “A music one. The Elvis 1968 comeback. Recommend that.”
“New Interpol album’s really good,” says Ryan. “Bought that about three weeks ago.”
The door flies open and in walks a member of their stage crew, who booms for the ginger one to come and soundcheck. “That hurt,” says Ryan in mock sadness, and he takes his leave.
“DOOR!” hisses Oli as the other guitarist exits. “And then there were two…”
The next card is ‘Wait For Me’. Last time I interviewed the band, their debut album (“12 beautiful tracks, all catchy,” Jimmi told us) was due to come out a couple of days later. Now it’s gone gold, having leapt into the album chart at number 3. They confirm this.
“It’s on its way to platinum,” says Matt. “It should be there by Christmas.” Have you got one of those big gold discs in a frame? “We have. Got them last week. They’re quite impressive but then you get them and you think, I’ve got nowhere to put this, so I might as well give it to my mum and she’ll put it on the wall.” The door creaks and slams again. It’s a bit what some people would refer to as Waterloo Station in here.
“I’m not really bothered with mine. I think my mum would really appreciate it,” says Oli. Has it surprised you how popular 'Wait For Me' is? “No,” says Oli decisively. They laugh.
“It surprised me that we got to where we got with certain things that conspired against us at one time or another. It’s not surprised me in terms of the hard work we’ve put in. There’s not many bands that have played as many gigs as we have in the last 12 months, so if it’s testament to that then we’re not surprised ‘cause we put the hard work in. I suppose it,” Matt pauses to think, “it is a little surprising. When you’re writing these songs in a rehearsal room in Leeds, you never expect them to be on a platinum-selling record.”
He's interrupted when the door swings open and in rustles an unfeasibly tall man with some carrier bags. “Fuck’s sake, next person that comes in’s dead.”
“Shut the fuck up, it’s my dressing room,” says drummer Jimmi, putting the bags down with a smile. “And I’ve got washing as well.” Oli and Matt both remind him to shut the fucking door.
“Cheers, Jim. How much do I owe you? Six quid?” asks Matt. “That’s a pound a sock.”
I was going to ask what each member of the band would put into Room 101, but sadly there’s only Matt and Oli left. They can still do it though, and it sounds like a few regular tour features are getting them down. Matt goes for ham and cheese sandwiches. “For some reason promoters are only capable of buying ham and cheese…” he complains, walking over to the table and picking up the offending foodstuffs.
Are you not capable of bringing your own sandwich fillings? “They’d go off after eight weeks,” points out Oli.
“When you wake up and you’ve got to go and do loads of press and radio and then you get to your dressing room and think ‘oh, I’ll have a sandwich,’ there’s only ever ham and cheese, and I’ve just about had enough.” In the background, through the open door comes the strains of the band on stage playing the riff to ‘Stop Or Go.’
”FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” yells Matt. One of their crew members has strolled in, barefoot, and balanced a pair of his socks in the middle of the rider as he prepares a ham and cheese sandwich. “Have they been on your feet?” asks Oli with a grin. Thankfully, they're clean and they haven’t.
Oli, meanwhile, is currently unimpressed with acoustic sessions. “Fucking hell,” he mutters. Have you just been made to do some? “Two a day or summat,” says Matt, and has a brief rant against ‘crappy’ local radio stations. Their tour manager points out there is a different local radio crew waiting outside the dressing room right now.
“Do we have to do an acoustic session?” asks Oli suspiciously. No, they don’t. They look relieved.
The Pigeon Detectives are running late. They were before I got in here, and they certainly are now. Doors open in about an hour and a half and there’s soundchecking to be done as well as a couple more interviews. The Pyramids that night is full of raucous lads and crowdsurfers. I actually get the breath knocked out of me a few times after being crushed on the barrier, which I don’t think has happened before at one of their gigs. Afterwards the band members are rounded up and sent to DJ in Southsea. Rumour has it they don’t actually get to sleep again until some time after their Bournemouth show the next night: no rest for the wicked.
2007 has shown the Pigeon Detectives' hard work is paying off. 2008 is even more likely to keep their diaries fully booked. Providing they don't overdo the ham and cheese, they'll surely be enjoying themselves a while longer yet.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in November 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
THE PIGEON DETECTIVES @ PORTSMOUTH PYRAMIDS CENTRE
The Pigeon Detectives have gone swimming. Tour tedium is being broken up at Portsmouth’s Pyramids Centre, which handily has a large number of fun pools and exciting flumes right next door to where hundreds of music lovers will gather later on for the band's gig.
With no real desire to see a bunch of chlorine-smelling, Yorkshire boys in their trunks, I wander off to sit on a bench overlooking the dusk falling across the Solent and have a think before heading to the interview in the band’s brightly lit dressing room. The squishy sofa is dangerously close to becoming one of those man-eating ones; you daren’t sit too far back in case you’re lost forever. Bassist Dave Best is quietly sat next to me. I think he's tired. I don’t deliberately have my back to him, but the layout of the room is a bit awkward. Singer Matt Bowman has his own comfy chair, giving him a lovely view of the bottled water on their rider. Oliver Main and Ryan Wilson are sitting opposite me on the sofa clearly reserved for guitarists. Drummer Jimmi Naylor is nowhere in sight.
Last time we spoke to the Pigeon Detectives, they were about to play their biggest headlining show yet at Leeds Town Hall. Two nights, both sold out. The next day, their debut album was released. From being poised on the edge of successful indie, ‘that band with the funny name’ were propelled onto the Radio 1 A list, onto more festival appearances, television appearances, autograph signings and more riotous gigs. There aren’t many bands who have played three tours plus festivals and European dates this year. My boss decided they were big enough to warrant a second interview in the space of a few months, and didn’t even bribe me with a bottle of rum this time.
“Is it ready?” asks Ryan, eyeing the dictaphone. Yep. “I’m Ryan.”
“I’m Dave.”
“I’m Matt.”
“I’m… Jimmi,” says Oli. Thanks for that.
Frontman Matt is brave enough to take a question card first. Fame and recognition, something they’ve been seeing a bit more of recently. “Good job no-one else got this one,” he says with a deliberate grin. His bandmates jeer. Are you the only one that gets recognised a lot then?
“We all get recognised, but he’s the only one who’s famous,” says Oli.
“Oli’s answered the question for me then I suppose. We mostly get recognised when we’re walking out as a group. I think individually we just look like any other indie kids, but when we’re in a pack, especially in Leeds, we get recognised quite a lot," says Matt.
"But not many people have the balls to come up and be polite and say ‘Hey, how are you doing? Good luck with everything.’ Either they just grab you and then slur the word ‘PHOTOGRAPH’ at you or just kind of point and stare, which is quite rude, you know.” I saw them play before and a girl said to Oli ‘You’re hot and I want to have your children’, and he looked terrified. Dave sniggers.
”Was that that crazy girl by any chance? Who was going insane with everyone?” asks Ryan with interest.
“She were going proper mental.” Oli thinks for a moment. “Seemed like a really nice girl though, if she ever reads this.”
Ryan picks tour. At the time of this interview, there was roughly one week remaining. So far there have been about seven weeks of sold out gigs. How's it going? “It’s going really well. We’ve played various venues from 200 capacity ones to 2,000 ones all over the UK and I think every one’s been pretty good so far.”
The support acts are enjoying it, particularly the Wallbirds. Ryan trips over his tongue and calls them the Wallbergs.
”Icebergs,” says Oli.
“They’re just like three best mates on quite a big tour with us,” says Ryan. “They’re from Doncaster. They’re a bit like us when we got on tour with Dirty Pretty Things, we were just so happy to be on a good tour, and they’re just loving themselves.” The rest of the band have dirty minds, and they let out snorts of laughter.
The tour manager walks in and asks Dave to sign an acoustic guitar, which is covered in scrawls already. He does. “We’re trying to do an interview here,” jokes Ryan.
Who’s your best crowd so far? “I think Dundee, for sheer volume anyway,” says Oli.
“Dundee from the front to the back and all out to the sides was just mental,” adds Matt. “Nottingham was good but we were fucking tired. We’d had to go to London to do TV then come back again, go onstage 20 minutes later without a soundcheck so we were pretty tired, but the crowd kind of dragged us through the gig. Manchester was good, but I hurt myself halfway through.” He broke - or fractured, depending where you read it - his ankle after leaping off a speaker stack. “It’s still not right really, but it’s getting there.” Still jumping round? “Yeah. Just about.”
Dave’s plucking two strings on the guitar – high, low, high, low - in the sort of tune which evokes a funny walk. Tell me about Millennium Square. “It’s in Leeds,” says Matt. The Pigeon Detectives have sold out their first May date there and recently announced a second night there.
“Is it sold out?” asks Oli. Yesterday’s press release said Yes. “Well there you go. Someone on our forum was saying it would take months to sell out.” He pauses. “You were wrong.”
They’re looking forward to the show, which will be their biggest headlining one so far. The Square holds roughly 7,000, which they double to work out how many should attend the whole weekend. “14,000’s quite a lot,” says Matt. “It would be good to do 14,000 on one night rather than spreading it over two, that would be impressive.” Think how many of your mates you could fit in there. “Exactly.”
Dave quietly apologises. Soundcheck is going on, and one by one the band will have to leave and do some work. It’s his turn to go. The door creaks open and closes again.
“I mean we’ve watched bands there like Snow Patrol, Editors, Embrace, Kaiser Chiefs, so to finally play it in our own right…” says Matt. Have you played it before with another band?
“Yeah, we played it with Snow Patrol. That was good, but again everything with the Pigeon Detectives seems to be rushed, so we kind of walked off stage, jumped straight in a Transit van and went and played at Sheffield, so we didn’t really get to enjoy the whole Millennium Square experience.”
“You should have said limousine. We jumped into our limousine,” corrects Oli.
“I’d have been telling lies though,” says Matt. I wouldn’t have known. I’m not going to check. “All right. It was a limousine.”
The Pigeon Detectives have been playing a few different songs while on tour. A couple of b-sides, a couple of new ones. “We have, yeah,” says Ryan. The dressing room door shuts again with a noisy crash. “Played two new ones. Kind of the first half of the tour we played one called ‘Making Up Numbers’ and that seemed to go down all right. And then the second half of the tour we’ve been playing one called ‘This Is An Emergency’ and that’s been going down quite well. We’ve got a few new tracks for our new album next year, and we do kind of prefer these two more to the rest of them. I think these are the two we’ve got properly finished as well, so that’s why we decided to play them. Like I said, they’ve gone down all right.”
‘Is This An Emergency’ sounds a bit heavier. Is the new stuff a little bit darker?
“Yeah,” says Oli. “No it isn’t!” says Matt.
“Not ridiculously,” says Ryan. “'Emergency' is the darkest one definitely. The second album’s not going to be exactly the same as the first album.”
Have you started recording yet? “Not yet,” says Oli.
“Demoed a few of them, just in a studio. Spent a day doing about four songs,” says Matt. “We’re going to start recording in a studio in Wales in January.”
Why Wales and not Leeds? “We just fancied getting out of Leeds. Just somewhere to go and get away from it all and focus on the Pigeon Detectives for four weeks without interruptions and record labels and management and stuff like that. And it’s got white water rafting, quad biking…”
“Tractors,” says Oli. Tractors? “Apparently the local farmer said we could have a go on his tractor.” I hope he knows what he’s letting himself in for. The image of an indie rocker fiendishly racing farm machinery is a frightening one.
Because Dave’s busy, Matt picks his card. What bands are you listening to? “We’re listening to a lot of The Wallbirds and One Night Only, seeing as how we’re on tour with them. Love the Kings Of Leon third album. I went and watched Rufus Wainwright recently in Harrogate, I sold all my mates out and didn’t bother sorting them out guestlist. But I went, selfishly. It was really good. We’ve had the Beatles on the iPod in the dressing room a hell of a lot recently. Still love the View record.”
Any CDs that you bought recently that you can recommend? “I bought a DVD,” says Oli. That’s not a CD. “A music one. The Elvis 1968 comeback. Recommend that.”
“New Interpol album’s really good,” says Ryan. “Bought that about three weeks ago.”
The door flies open and in walks a member of their stage crew, who booms for the ginger one to come and soundcheck. “That hurt,” says Ryan in mock sadness, and he takes his leave.
“DOOR!” hisses Oli as the other guitarist exits. “And then there were two…”
The next card is ‘Wait For Me’. Last time I interviewed the band, their debut album (“12 beautiful tracks, all catchy,” Jimmi told us) was due to come out a couple of days later. Now it’s gone gold, having leapt into the album chart at number 3. They confirm this.
“It’s on its way to platinum,” says Matt. “It should be there by Christmas.” Have you got one of those big gold discs in a frame? “We have. Got them last week. They’re quite impressive but then you get them and you think, I’ve got nowhere to put this, so I might as well give it to my mum and she’ll put it on the wall.” The door creaks and slams again. It’s a bit what some people would refer to as Waterloo Station in here.
“I’m not really bothered with mine. I think my mum would really appreciate it,” says Oli. Has it surprised you how popular 'Wait For Me' is? “No,” says Oli decisively. They laugh.
“It surprised me that we got to where we got with certain things that conspired against us at one time or another. It’s not surprised me in terms of the hard work we’ve put in. There’s not many bands that have played as many gigs as we have in the last 12 months, so if it’s testament to that then we’re not surprised ‘cause we put the hard work in. I suppose it,” Matt pauses to think, “it is a little surprising. When you’re writing these songs in a rehearsal room in Leeds, you never expect them to be on a platinum-selling record.”
He's interrupted when the door swings open and in rustles an unfeasibly tall man with some carrier bags. “Fuck’s sake, next person that comes in’s dead.”
“Shut the fuck up, it’s my dressing room,” says drummer Jimmi, putting the bags down with a smile. “And I’ve got washing as well.” Oli and Matt both remind him to shut the fucking door.
“Cheers, Jim. How much do I owe you? Six quid?” asks Matt. “That’s a pound a sock.”
I was going to ask what each member of the band would put into Room 101, but sadly there’s only Matt and Oli left. They can still do it though, and it sounds like a few regular tour features are getting them down. Matt goes for ham and cheese sandwiches. “For some reason promoters are only capable of buying ham and cheese…” he complains, walking over to the table and picking up the offending foodstuffs.
Are you not capable of bringing your own sandwich fillings? “They’d go off after eight weeks,” points out Oli.
“When you wake up and you’ve got to go and do loads of press and radio and then you get to your dressing room and think ‘oh, I’ll have a sandwich,’ there’s only ever ham and cheese, and I’ve just about had enough.” In the background, through the open door comes the strains of the band on stage playing the riff to ‘Stop Or Go.’
”FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” yells Matt. One of their crew members has strolled in, barefoot, and balanced a pair of his socks in the middle of the rider as he prepares a ham and cheese sandwich. “Have they been on your feet?” asks Oli with a grin. Thankfully, they're clean and they haven’t.
Oli, meanwhile, is currently unimpressed with acoustic sessions. “Fucking hell,” he mutters. Have you just been made to do some? “Two a day or summat,” says Matt, and has a brief rant against ‘crappy’ local radio stations. Their tour manager points out there is a different local radio crew waiting outside the dressing room right now.
“Do we have to do an acoustic session?” asks Oli suspiciously. No, they don’t. They look relieved.
The Pigeon Detectives are running late. They were before I got in here, and they certainly are now. Doors open in about an hour and a half and there’s soundchecking to be done as well as a couple more interviews. The Pyramids that night is full of raucous lads and crowdsurfers. I actually get the breath knocked out of me a few times after being crushed on the barrier, which I don’t think has happened before at one of their gigs. Afterwards the band members are rounded up and sent to DJ in Southsea. Rumour has it they don’t actually get to sleep again until some time after their Bournemouth show the next night: no rest for the wicked.
2007 has shown the Pigeon Detectives' hard work is paying off. 2008 is even more likely to keep their diaries fully booked. Providing they don't overdo the ham and cheese, they'll surely be enjoying themselves a while longer yet.
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Interview - The Pigeon Detectives (Leeds)
After being caught interviewing their support band and not them, the Pigeon Detectives politely asked Why? Anyway, after my boss daily ordered me to interview the band I see frequently as a fan (and bribed me with a bottle of rum) I managed to get them. Although they weren't without their suspicions - see Matt's comment about 'is this a real interview?' at the end. Cheers...
It took some organising - with no help from the PR I asked Oli (in Southampton), who referred me to their tour manager. I found out who he was at the next gig (London), asked for an interview the following gig (Northampton), and caught up with them the next day (Leeds). I was in the area for their show the next night anyway. I missed most of the Live At Leeds festival shitting myself in preparation for this, terrified I would come across as an unprofessional idiot, and the Walk Of Fear up the steps of the Town Hall is still one of my most nerve-wracking moments as an interviewer.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in May 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
THE PIGEON DETECTIVES
Matt Bowman - vocals, Oliver Main - guitar, Ryan Wilson - guitar, Dave Best - bass, Jimmi Naylor - drums
It’s Saturday evening in Leeds. A couple of girls wearing band t-shirts are excitedly babbling outside the Town Hall as they shelter from the weather and wait for the doors to open. It’s grey and cold, confirming everything I ever suspected about Yorkshire.
Inside though, it’s much warmer and there’s no chance of being rained on, unless you count the water which is bound to be thrown around during the next gig. Backstage, all five of the Pigeon Detectives are sat in a semi circle, surrounded by posters they were halfway through signing. You can’t blame them for looking slightly confused; usually I’m stuck on their front row sweating and yelling, today I’m sat dry and polite with a dictaphone to one side. To be honest I was trying to avoid interviewing them because as a fan I thought it would be weird, but then The Boss, able to spot a corrupt journalist at a distance of some three feet across the table, bribed me with a bottle of rum if I did the deed.
In just under two hours, the doors will open for the Pigeon Detectives' first sold out gig at the Town Hall. If they're nervous, they're hiding it well. Singer Matt Bowman’s sat to my right, and next to him is guitarist Ryan Wilson, drummer Jimmi Naylor, lead guitarist Oliver Main and bassist Dave Best, who is looking strangely impressed at the coloured question cards scattered at random. He volunteers to go first.
The Early Years.
“We basically all started learning to play guitar when we were about 16…” starts Dave.
“I were 15,” says Oli.
“He were 15…”
“I was 17,” says Ryan. “That was just wrong really, wasn’t it.”
“That’s why I said about 16!”
“You’ve averaged it out, haven’t you?”
“I took a mean average,” Dave continues. “We started when we were about 16. Me and Oli taught each other the basics and then we kind of taught each other from Beatles books and stuff like that. We taught Matt to play guitar but he didn’t have as good technique as Ryan did, not as natural as Ryan, with his little stumpy fingers, so we just…”
They pause. The tour manager is loudly discussing important band things with some other people.
“Get out! We can’t hear a thing!”
“Get in your production office,” orders Ryan jovially.
“Go on, piss off!” They do as they’re told with a chuckle and a shake of the head.
“Ry decided one day we were going to be in a band, he just told me and Oli,” continues Dave. “After that, we decide we were gonna do some covers in Ol’s bedroom and stuff like that. That’s really it, until Jimmi met Ry when Jimmi were about 12. When they worked at Staples together. He’s only 13 now.”
Young Jimmi sits there smiling and points out he was actually about 16 at the time.
“We needed a drummer and we got him down and we decided to keep him, because we instantly fell in love with him.” Ahh.
“We’ve all been mates for quite a long time though,” says Ryan.
“Us four were mates since we were about six years old. Me and Ry were in the same class at school every year since we were about two,” says Dave.
How long has the band been going full time for? “A year,” says Dave instantly. Someone else says two years. They laugh, try to remember when they quit their jobs and think about it.
“Did you say full time?” asks Ryan. Yes.
“Actually pretty much a year.”
“We haven’t got a full time contract yet,” says Matt, possibly eyeing a legal loophole.
“If you go by us quitting our job and then being in a band for a living…”
“We had our first single out in March,” says Matt.
“…so about a year,” finishes Ryan. That first single was ‘I’m Not Sorry’, originally limited to 500 vinyls which didn’t take long to sell out. A few months later came 'You Know I Love You', which also sold out. The buzz had begun.
Didn’t I read somewhere that one of you got sacked –
“That were Oli.”
- because your bosses heard you on the radio?
“That were me,” says Matt. “I’d already handed my notice in, I had like two weeks left on my notice but they just said get out. Dave never even went back. Dave didn’t even have the courtesy to say ‘I’m leaving’.” Dave starts giggling. “You actually went to London and then never returned,” says Matt with a grin and a wave of his arm. “’I’m off to London’ – that’s the last they ever heard of you.”
Are they still looking out for you now? “Thing is they let me have that day off very nicely so I could go to London. And I just never came back,” confesses Dave.
“Coward,” says Ryan.
Oli leans over and snatches up the next card. It's a random one. You’re trapped on a desert island, who do you eat first? The answer is Ryan, because “he’s got the most flesh.” Ryan doesn’t actually look particularly unhappy – or surprised - about having his potential fate discussed this way.
“Unlucky, Ry,” says Matt. “Gingers cook faster as well. They’ve got sensitive skin, like the perfect white meat.” Someone suggests spit-roasting Ryan, and he laughs.
“I’ll leave that there,” says Oli, wisely.
Jimmi takes the next card. Wait For Me. Tell me about your debut album.
“It’s twelve beautiful songs, all catchy,” he says. Got any favourites? “My favourite’s ‘Caught In Your Trap’ and maybe ‘Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye’.”
“I think my favourite’s ‘Caught In Your Trap’,” teases Oli, mimicking his drummer’s pronunciation.
I forgot to ask why a picture of stags was chosen for the cover, but a chance reading of The Fly suggests it’s because stags spend their time fighting and ‘sleeping with other stags’ girls’, much like the late teen experiences of the Pigeon Detectives.
“We recorded it in bits ‘cause we were doing things like supporting Dirty Pretty Things…”
“That’s a lie,” say Matt and Ryan, almost at the same time. “That were well early. Supporting Kaiser Chiefs.”
“Supporting Kaisers…” Jimmi corrects himself. Are you telling me lies, Jimmi? “Yeah, I’m lying to you. We started off, we went in for about two weeks, going in for a few hours, then we went and supported Kaiser Chiefs and went back in; altogether about five weeks, but we spread it out.”
Matt and Dave are sneakily looking at question cards and putting them back on the pile.
“And then we had to go and get it mixed and stuff which took another three or four weeks or something like that,” says Ryan. “Getting it mixed took ages, like you know, it was our debut album, let’s get it perfect in every single way. You’ve got to get it recorded well but you’ve got to get it mixed well as well. Took us a while.”
Matt’s getting impatient and takes a card. Current Tour. They're nearing the end of it now, with loud and sweaty 12 dates across the UK almost complete. How’s it going?
“It’s all right. Picking up some injuries,” Matt winces. He’s very energetic onstage, climbing equipment and forever leaping/being dragged into the crowd.
Ryan starts complaining that they’ve missed his turn out.
“You can go next Ry. Carry on Matt,” says Dave, the voice of calm. He’s wearing a white shirt on which he has sewn a Leeds badge, all ready for the gig tonight.
“Tour’s going well, I think highlights so far are probably Manchester and London Astoria, that were all right.”
“Last night (Northampton) were really good, wasn’t it,” says Ryan, and Jimmi murmurs agreement. “You were at the gig last night weren’t you?” I nod.
“I’m really knackered though. I’ve got the world’s worst fucking dead leg,” complains Matt. Why, what have you done? “Don’t know. Think just a collection of knocks.”
“You know when footballers used to say they were injured for two weeks with a dead leg, I’d be like a dead leg lasts ten minutes, how can you be injured for two weeks!” laughs Dave. They all talk at once about how Matt might have done it. I had to get my glasses straightened out a few hours earlier after a crowdsurfing Matt jumped on my face in Northampton and bent them. The Pigeon Detectives laugh loudly, but don't apologise. It's an occasional hazard of gig-going.
”Headline: Matt Pigeon Sat On My Face,” jokes Matt. “Ry, I’ll get you a card. Which one do you want?”
“Any.”
“So it’s actually… You moan that you don’t get to pick and then…” Matt sighs.
What’s the best lie you’ve told about where your name comes from?
“Fucking hell. The best lie!” says Ryan. I heard somewhere you’re fed up of being asked so you tend to make up bizarre answers.
“The best one’s got to be, there’s a giant pigeon that lives in a shed at the bottom of our garden that writes all our lyrics,” says Matt. “That’s got to be the best one!” he says between gales of laughter. “Or at least the most ridiculous.”
“We do actually come up with some insane things, we find it funny though don’t we?” says Ryan.
“Didn’t we tell someone once we all went to a fancy dress party dressed as pigeons?” says Matt.
“I told someone once that Jimmi were watching ‘The Detectives’ with Jasper Carrott on TV when a dead pigeon fell out the skies outside his house,” giggles Dave.
“The best ones though are when you do the foreign interviews,” says Matt. “And you go (odd accent) ‘There’s a giant pigeon that lives at the end of our garden and writes all our lyrics” and they just go ‘Que?’” He’s putting on an interesting Spanish accent, though a native would probably disagree that it’s Spanish at all. “What? What is it, pigeon and the lyrics?”
“And they go ‘oh, ok’ and write it down!” says Dave. Fools.
Radio 1’s Big Weekend. How was it?
“It were good,” says Dave.
“Big,” says Oli.
“It were big,” confirms Dave.
“It were at the weekend.”
“On Radio 1,” says Ryan, quite rightly. They start chuckling.
“Er… no, it were good, it were like a really big festival crowd, it were quite a good warm up. They were quite a tame crowd but I think that’s because they weren’t generally loads of massive gig goers. But the front ten rows were like really having it, so it were really good.”
“The single ’I’m Not Sorry’, it went nuts right to the back, but I think that’s because it were a Radio 1 song,” says Matt.
“Someone threw a Cornish pasty at me,” remembers Dave. A Cornish pasty? “Well it were still in its packet.” Oh that’s all right then.
“We had a message on MySpace the next day, going ‘oh, I’m sorry if I offended your bass player, he looked really pissed off. It was thrown out of good’,” explains Ryan.
They all start talking over each other again, but I can hear Matt say about Dave “He volleyed it!” Were you upset you couldn’t open it because you were trying to play?
“No, I just picked it up and kicked it, but I really connected with it and it landed right back of tent.”
“I broke a £20,000 BBC TV camera that we’ve not had a bill for yet,” says Matt. “My mic lead got wrapped around it.” Anyone who’s been to see the Pigeon Detectives live will know this is not an unusual occurrence, with the lead often becoming entangled with Oli’s guitar, the drum kit and the mic stand, sometimes all at once.
“It was on them moving runners. It started running away from me and it was pulling me and I had a bit of a tug of war with it. I won and the camera lost and it just went [makes crunching noise] then ground to a halt. All these guys came running over. I was like, ooops-a-daisy.”
What sort of time were you on?
“Half one,” says Oli.
“Which were a shit time ‘cause I got out of bed at one,” says Matt. “So I got out of bed all sleepy-eyed, half one it was just, get on stage in front of three thousand people and I was like ‘Eh… what?’”
Did you have many people going along just for you?
“Yeah the tent were rammed and it emptied when we left,” says Matt. “Who went on after us? Biffy Clyro? No it weren’t, it were Cold War Kids. They looked like they had a bit of a tough time of it.”
Did you stand round and watch them? “I did,” says Ryan.
“I watched a bit,” Matt says.
“They’re pretty good,” says Ryan.
“They made me feel like I wanted to go to bed. I thought they were boring.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I watched a couple of bands, and the crowd seemed quite curious towards almost every band, even massive bands they weren’t going as mental,” muses Ryan.
“Best band of the day were Kasabian, I thought they were fucking ace,” says Matt. For some reason he then starts making high pitched noises at Oli, who fixes him with a hard stare before taking a drink.
I’m Not Sorry is Oli’s card, which Dave thrusts at him. “I thought it was your go,” says Oli. It's their third full release on Dance To The Radio, after 'Romantic Type' earlier this year and 'I Found Out'. I hope you’ve all bought copies of it. “I bought six so far,” he says.
“I just went out and bought three,” says Matt. “Me and Ol got busted by about ten kids in HMV buying ‘I’m Not Sorry’, then they followed us around town for about an hour...”
“Were they girls by any chance?” asks Ryan.
“Girls and a lad. Until they got the courage to ask us for photos,” finishes Matt. “Then they went to Ol ‘Are you in t’band?’ and he went ‘No, I’m the fucking guitar tech.’ It was like this 12 year old girl and I was like, oh Jesus!” They all laugh.
“This girl asked for a picture yesterday,” laughs Dave. “Jimmi came in to the end of it and I went ‘Who’s this random?’ and she was like ‘Oh it don’t matter, I love it when randoms come into pictures!’ Jimmi just looked at me and went [grumpy face] and turned around.”
“She tried to apologise later and you were just like, fuck off. She proper offended you didn’t she,” says Ryan.
Jimmi’s being called out on stage to set up the drums, but he stands up and grabs one last card saying “I’ll get this.”
“You haven’t even answered that one yet,” says Ryan. Jimmi dithers.
“Just fuck off, no-one wants you here,” says Oli.
“We don’t want randoms playing this game,” says Ryan. A few kicks are aimed, and poor Jimmi departs for work. Back to ‘I’m Not Sorry.’
“Shit song, shit name,” Matt says, which I don’t believe is the promotional tag they’ve gone with. We have a guess at where it will chart the next day. The band are going with 12, seeing as that’s what they’ve heard today. They were spot on.
“I had a dream last night that us album got to number one,” says Dave.
“I had a dream…” sings Matt, the fifth member of ABBA.
“It were pretty good.”
“What, the dream or the album?” asks Oli.
“The… dream.”
“I had a dream that I were in London and there was a massive riot, so when I woke up the next morning in London I were going, were I rioting last night? It were one of them proper did-I-riot-last-night dreams,” says Matt. And did you riot? “I didn’t. It was a dream.”
“We haven’t actually answered the ‘I’m Not Sorry’ thing yet,” points out Dave.
“We have,” says Ryan.
“Got any more questions about I’m Not Sorry?” Oli asks me. Er, no. “OK.”
Ryan picks up an orange card. “I think it’s going to say South By South West,” says Matt, who is either psychic or has been cheating. “It’s in Texas.” Shedloads of new bands playing to keen music lovers and industry bods, all in the sunny United States.
How was it? “It were ace,” says Ryan. I didn’t hear much about it – I know pretty much everyone in the industry goes, but you never seem to hear much about what happens.
“Well basically like we only played one gig out there, and some other bands paid the NME to go out there and stuff. We didn’t, so NME wrote about these other bands who paid for them to go out and just overlooked us, so you probably wouldn’t have read much about it,” explains Ryan. “We actually played a gig and it were really good.”
Oli is still proudly sporting his sheriff badge, all the way from Texas. “I’m not even sure we went, according to the press,” he comments.
“I’m not sure we did, did we?” says Ryan.
“To be fair, it were a bit of a holiday,” says Matt. “We went out for a week, played one gig and then just sat around watching bands like Kings of Leon, Buzzcocks, Paolo Nutini, Albert Hammond Jr…”
“I think our manager said you’re out for one week playing one gig, enjoy yourself,” says Ryan.
“We got our publishing company to pay for it,” says Matt, “and we signed a publishing deal out there as well, which were nice.”
“Some great burgers,” says Dave, who knows what’s important. Worth going all the way just for that? “I love a burger.”
What do you think of your fans? asks one of my friends. “Tell him I’d like to have sex with the male fans and go shopping with the girl fans,” says Matt.
Dave reaches for the next card as fast as he can while trying to keep a straight face.
“Swiftly moving on…” says Oli.
Favourite film. Dave is happy he’s picked up this card. “Quite funnily enough, I’m the perfect person to ask that question to.”
“Mine’s Pirates of the Caribbean!” shouts Matt excitedly. “Ohh! Ohh!”
“Disregard Matt because he’s a film pleb and he doesn’t know anything about the medium,” Dave orders.
“Pirates of the Caribbean!”
“Mine’s Usual Suspects,” says Oli.
“Usual Suspects is my favourite…” begins Dave.
“I’ve already chose it. You can’t have it.” A few punches are thrown.
“Ow! Or maybe Shawshank Redemption,” Dave continues, between thumping Oli. “Or maybe True Romance…They’re my three.”
“Did you read that in a magazine?” says Oli, who I’d always assumed to be the quiet one, but who has turned out to be something of a cheeky so-and-so.
“Yeah.”
“Or do you have any opinions of your own?”
“I like Gladiator as well,” says Matt. “I like the bit where he goes (does tough Yorkshire Gladiator voice) ‘Husband of raped wife… father of murdered child…’…”
“What, that cheesiest bit in any film ever?” asks Dave.
“Yes. Then he goes ‘I am Maximus Decimus Meridius.’ And then he kills them all. Gladiator. Right film.”
“I’ve only seen it once all the way through. I just don’t like Russell Crowe, I think he’s a dick,” says Dave, and they discuss exactly how awful Master and Commander is.
“I got bored, I was like I don’t really get this,” admits Oli.
“I did but I committed 40 minutes of my life to it, I wanted to find out what happened. And I actually found out what happened,” says Matt.
“So Suzy, level with us, is this actually an interview or did you just want to come and sit in the dressing room and talk to us?” says Matt, looking at me sideways. Yes, you’re onto me. I can’t get enough of stealing Doritos from your crap rider.
Oli quite rightly points out there will be a bottle of rum waiting on my desk when I get back to work, and I think they’re a little jealous they just have warm beer. I get the feeling that after the Town Hall gig in a few hours, it will be a long time before they have to buy their own drinks again.
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The Pigeon Detectives debut album ‘Wait For Me’ is released on May 28th through Dance To The Radio.
Website
MySpace
It took some organising - with no help from the PR I asked Oli (in Southampton), who referred me to their tour manager. I found out who he was at the next gig (London), asked for an interview the following gig (Northampton), and caught up with them the next day (Leeds). I was in the area for their show the next night anyway. I missed most of the Live At Leeds festival shitting myself in preparation for this, terrified I would come across as an unprofessional idiot, and the Walk Of Fear up the steps of the Town Hall is still one of my most nerve-wracking moments as an interviewer.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in May 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
THE PIGEON DETECTIVES
Matt Bowman - vocals, Oliver Main - guitar, Ryan Wilson - guitar, Dave Best - bass, Jimmi Naylor - drums
It’s Saturday evening in Leeds. A couple of girls wearing band t-shirts are excitedly babbling outside the Town Hall as they shelter from the weather and wait for the doors to open. It’s grey and cold, confirming everything I ever suspected about Yorkshire.
Inside though, it’s much warmer and there’s no chance of being rained on, unless you count the water which is bound to be thrown around during the next gig. Backstage, all five of the Pigeon Detectives are sat in a semi circle, surrounded by posters they were halfway through signing. You can’t blame them for looking slightly confused; usually I’m stuck on their front row sweating and yelling, today I’m sat dry and polite with a dictaphone to one side. To be honest I was trying to avoid interviewing them because as a fan I thought it would be weird, but then The Boss, able to spot a corrupt journalist at a distance of some three feet across the table, bribed me with a bottle of rum if I did the deed.
In just under two hours, the doors will open for the Pigeon Detectives' first sold out gig at the Town Hall. If they're nervous, they're hiding it well. Singer Matt Bowman’s sat to my right, and next to him is guitarist Ryan Wilson, drummer Jimmi Naylor, lead guitarist Oliver Main and bassist Dave Best, who is looking strangely impressed at the coloured question cards scattered at random. He volunteers to go first.
The Early Years.
“We basically all started learning to play guitar when we were about 16…” starts Dave.
“I were 15,” says Oli.
“He were 15…”
“I was 17,” says Ryan. “That was just wrong really, wasn’t it.”
“That’s why I said about 16!”
“You’ve averaged it out, haven’t you?”
“I took a mean average,” Dave continues. “We started when we were about 16. Me and Oli taught each other the basics and then we kind of taught each other from Beatles books and stuff like that. We taught Matt to play guitar but he didn’t have as good technique as Ryan did, not as natural as Ryan, with his little stumpy fingers, so we just…”
They pause. The tour manager is loudly discussing important band things with some other people.
“Get out! We can’t hear a thing!”
“Get in your production office,” orders Ryan jovially.
“Go on, piss off!” They do as they’re told with a chuckle and a shake of the head.
“Ry decided one day we were going to be in a band, he just told me and Oli,” continues Dave. “After that, we decide we were gonna do some covers in Ol’s bedroom and stuff like that. That’s really it, until Jimmi met Ry when Jimmi were about 12. When they worked at Staples together. He’s only 13 now.”
Young Jimmi sits there smiling and points out he was actually about 16 at the time.
“We needed a drummer and we got him down and we decided to keep him, because we instantly fell in love with him.” Ahh.
“We’ve all been mates for quite a long time though,” says Ryan.
“Us four were mates since we were about six years old. Me and Ry were in the same class at school every year since we were about two,” says Dave.
How long has the band been going full time for? “A year,” says Dave instantly. Someone else says two years. They laugh, try to remember when they quit their jobs and think about it.
“Did you say full time?” asks Ryan. Yes.
“Actually pretty much a year.”
“We haven’t got a full time contract yet,” says Matt, possibly eyeing a legal loophole.
“If you go by us quitting our job and then being in a band for a living…”
“We had our first single out in March,” says Matt.
“…so about a year,” finishes Ryan. That first single was ‘I’m Not Sorry’, originally limited to 500 vinyls which didn’t take long to sell out. A few months later came 'You Know I Love You', which also sold out. The buzz had begun.
Didn’t I read somewhere that one of you got sacked –
“That were Oli.”
- because your bosses heard you on the radio?
“That were me,” says Matt. “I’d already handed my notice in, I had like two weeks left on my notice but they just said get out. Dave never even went back. Dave didn’t even have the courtesy to say ‘I’m leaving’.” Dave starts giggling. “You actually went to London and then never returned,” says Matt with a grin and a wave of his arm. “’I’m off to London’ – that’s the last they ever heard of you.”
Are they still looking out for you now? “Thing is they let me have that day off very nicely so I could go to London. And I just never came back,” confesses Dave.
“Coward,” says Ryan.
Oli leans over and snatches up the next card. It's a random one. You’re trapped on a desert island, who do you eat first? The answer is Ryan, because “he’s got the most flesh.” Ryan doesn’t actually look particularly unhappy – or surprised - about having his potential fate discussed this way.
“Unlucky, Ry,” says Matt. “Gingers cook faster as well. They’ve got sensitive skin, like the perfect white meat.” Someone suggests spit-roasting Ryan, and he laughs.
“I’ll leave that there,” says Oli, wisely.
Jimmi takes the next card. Wait For Me. Tell me about your debut album.
“It’s twelve beautiful songs, all catchy,” he says. Got any favourites? “My favourite’s ‘Caught In Your Trap’ and maybe ‘Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye’.”
“I think my favourite’s ‘Caught In Your Trap’,” teases Oli, mimicking his drummer’s pronunciation.
I forgot to ask why a picture of stags was chosen for the cover, but a chance reading of The Fly suggests it’s because stags spend their time fighting and ‘sleeping with other stags’ girls’, much like the late teen experiences of the Pigeon Detectives.
“We recorded it in bits ‘cause we were doing things like supporting Dirty Pretty Things…”
“That’s a lie,” say Matt and Ryan, almost at the same time. “That were well early. Supporting Kaiser Chiefs.”
“Supporting Kaisers…” Jimmi corrects himself. Are you telling me lies, Jimmi? “Yeah, I’m lying to you. We started off, we went in for about two weeks, going in for a few hours, then we went and supported Kaiser Chiefs and went back in; altogether about five weeks, but we spread it out.”
Matt and Dave are sneakily looking at question cards and putting them back on the pile.
“And then we had to go and get it mixed and stuff which took another three or four weeks or something like that,” says Ryan. “Getting it mixed took ages, like you know, it was our debut album, let’s get it perfect in every single way. You’ve got to get it recorded well but you’ve got to get it mixed well as well. Took us a while.”
Matt’s getting impatient and takes a card. Current Tour. They're nearing the end of it now, with loud and sweaty 12 dates across the UK almost complete. How’s it going?
“It’s all right. Picking up some injuries,” Matt winces. He’s very energetic onstage, climbing equipment and forever leaping/being dragged into the crowd.
Ryan starts complaining that they’ve missed his turn out.
“You can go next Ry. Carry on Matt,” says Dave, the voice of calm. He’s wearing a white shirt on which he has sewn a Leeds badge, all ready for the gig tonight.
“Tour’s going well, I think highlights so far are probably Manchester and London Astoria, that were all right.”
“Last night (Northampton) were really good, wasn’t it,” says Ryan, and Jimmi murmurs agreement. “You were at the gig last night weren’t you?” I nod.
“I’m really knackered though. I’ve got the world’s worst fucking dead leg,” complains Matt. Why, what have you done? “Don’t know. Think just a collection of knocks.”
“You know when footballers used to say they were injured for two weeks with a dead leg, I’d be like a dead leg lasts ten minutes, how can you be injured for two weeks!” laughs Dave. They all talk at once about how Matt might have done it. I had to get my glasses straightened out a few hours earlier after a crowdsurfing Matt jumped on my face in Northampton and bent them. The Pigeon Detectives laugh loudly, but don't apologise. It's an occasional hazard of gig-going.
”Headline: Matt Pigeon Sat On My Face,” jokes Matt. “Ry, I’ll get you a card. Which one do you want?”
“Any.”
“So it’s actually… You moan that you don’t get to pick and then…” Matt sighs.
What’s the best lie you’ve told about where your name comes from?
“Fucking hell. The best lie!” says Ryan. I heard somewhere you’re fed up of being asked so you tend to make up bizarre answers.
“The best one’s got to be, there’s a giant pigeon that lives in a shed at the bottom of our garden that writes all our lyrics,” says Matt. “That’s got to be the best one!” he says between gales of laughter. “Or at least the most ridiculous.”
“We do actually come up with some insane things, we find it funny though don’t we?” says Ryan.
“Didn’t we tell someone once we all went to a fancy dress party dressed as pigeons?” says Matt.
“I told someone once that Jimmi were watching ‘The Detectives’ with Jasper Carrott on TV when a dead pigeon fell out the skies outside his house,” giggles Dave.
“The best ones though are when you do the foreign interviews,” says Matt. “And you go (odd accent) ‘There’s a giant pigeon that lives at the end of our garden and writes all our lyrics” and they just go ‘Que?’” He’s putting on an interesting Spanish accent, though a native would probably disagree that it’s Spanish at all. “What? What is it, pigeon and the lyrics?”
“And they go ‘oh, ok’ and write it down!” says Dave. Fools.
Radio 1’s Big Weekend. How was it?
“It were good,” says Dave.
“Big,” says Oli.
“It were big,” confirms Dave.
“It were at the weekend.”
“On Radio 1,” says Ryan, quite rightly. They start chuckling.
“Er… no, it were good, it were like a really big festival crowd, it were quite a good warm up. They were quite a tame crowd but I think that’s because they weren’t generally loads of massive gig goers. But the front ten rows were like really having it, so it were really good.”
“The single ’I’m Not Sorry’, it went nuts right to the back, but I think that’s because it were a Radio 1 song,” says Matt.
“Someone threw a Cornish pasty at me,” remembers Dave. A Cornish pasty? “Well it were still in its packet.” Oh that’s all right then.
“We had a message on MySpace the next day, going ‘oh, I’m sorry if I offended your bass player, he looked really pissed off. It was thrown out of good’,” explains Ryan.
They all start talking over each other again, but I can hear Matt say about Dave “He volleyed it!” Were you upset you couldn’t open it because you were trying to play?
“No, I just picked it up and kicked it, but I really connected with it and it landed right back of tent.”
“I broke a £20,000 BBC TV camera that we’ve not had a bill for yet,” says Matt. “My mic lead got wrapped around it.” Anyone who’s been to see the Pigeon Detectives live will know this is not an unusual occurrence, with the lead often becoming entangled with Oli’s guitar, the drum kit and the mic stand, sometimes all at once.
“It was on them moving runners. It started running away from me and it was pulling me and I had a bit of a tug of war with it. I won and the camera lost and it just went [makes crunching noise] then ground to a halt. All these guys came running over. I was like, ooops-a-daisy.”
What sort of time were you on?
“Half one,” says Oli.
“Which were a shit time ‘cause I got out of bed at one,” says Matt. “So I got out of bed all sleepy-eyed, half one it was just, get on stage in front of three thousand people and I was like ‘Eh… what?’”
Did you have many people going along just for you?
“Yeah the tent were rammed and it emptied when we left,” says Matt. “Who went on after us? Biffy Clyro? No it weren’t, it were Cold War Kids. They looked like they had a bit of a tough time of it.”
Did you stand round and watch them? “I did,” says Ryan.
“I watched a bit,” Matt says.
“They’re pretty good,” says Ryan.
“They made me feel like I wanted to go to bed. I thought they were boring.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I watched a couple of bands, and the crowd seemed quite curious towards almost every band, even massive bands they weren’t going as mental,” muses Ryan.
“Best band of the day were Kasabian, I thought they were fucking ace,” says Matt. For some reason he then starts making high pitched noises at Oli, who fixes him with a hard stare before taking a drink.
I’m Not Sorry is Oli’s card, which Dave thrusts at him. “I thought it was your go,” says Oli. It's their third full release on Dance To The Radio, after 'Romantic Type' earlier this year and 'I Found Out'. I hope you’ve all bought copies of it. “I bought six so far,” he says.
“I just went out and bought three,” says Matt. “Me and Ol got busted by about ten kids in HMV buying ‘I’m Not Sorry’, then they followed us around town for about an hour...”
“Were they girls by any chance?” asks Ryan.
“Girls and a lad. Until they got the courage to ask us for photos,” finishes Matt. “Then they went to Ol ‘Are you in t’band?’ and he went ‘No, I’m the fucking guitar tech.’ It was like this 12 year old girl and I was like, oh Jesus!” They all laugh.
“This girl asked for a picture yesterday,” laughs Dave. “Jimmi came in to the end of it and I went ‘Who’s this random?’ and she was like ‘Oh it don’t matter, I love it when randoms come into pictures!’ Jimmi just looked at me and went [grumpy face] and turned around.”
“She tried to apologise later and you were just like, fuck off. She proper offended you didn’t she,” says Ryan.
Jimmi’s being called out on stage to set up the drums, but he stands up and grabs one last card saying “I’ll get this.”
“You haven’t even answered that one yet,” says Ryan. Jimmi dithers.
“Just fuck off, no-one wants you here,” says Oli.
“We don’t want randoms playing this game,” says Ryan. A few kicks are aimed, and poor Jimmi departs for work. Back to ‘I’m Not Sorry.’
“Shit song, shit name,” Matt says, which I don’t believe is the promotional tag they’ve gone with. We have a guess at where it will chart the next day. The band are going with 12, seeing as that’s what they’ve heard today. They were spot on.
“I had a dream last night that us album got to number one,” says Dave.
“I had a dream…” sings Matt, the fifth member of ABBA.
“It were pretty good.”
“What, the dream or the album?” asks Oli.
“The… dream.”
“I had a dream that I were in London and there was a massive riot, so when I woke up the next morning in London I were going, were I rioting last night? It were one of them proper did-I-riot-last-night dreams,” says Matt. And did you riot? “I didn’t. It was a dream.”
“We haven’t actually answered the ‘I’m Not Sorry’ thing yet,” points out Dave.
“We have,” says Ryan.
“Got any more questions about I’m Not Sorry?” Oli asks me. Er, no. “OK.”
Ryan picks up an orange card. “I think it’s going to say South By South West,” says Matt, who is either psychic or has been cheating. “It’s in Texas.” Shedloads of new bands playing to keen music lovers and industry bods, all in the sunny United States.
How was it? “It were ace,” says Ryan. I didn’t hear much about it – I know pretty much everyone in the industry goes, but you never seem to hear much about what happens.
“Well basically like we only played one gig out there, and some other bands paid the NME to go out there and stuff. We didn’t, so NME wrote about these other bands who paid for them to go out and just overlooked us, so you probably wouldn’t have read much about it,” explains Ryan. “We actually played a gig and it were really good.”
Oli is still proudly sporting his sheriff badge, all the way from Texas. “I’m not even sure we went, according to the press,” he comments.
“I’m not sure we did, did we?” says Ryan.
“To be fair, it were a bit of a holiday,” says Matt. “We went out for a week, played one gig and then just sat around watching bands like Kings of Leon, Buzzcocks, Paolo Nutini, Albert Hammond Jr…”
“I think our manager said you’re out for one week playing one gig, enjoy yourself,” says Ryan.
“We got our publishing company to pay for it,” says Matt, “and we signed a publishing deal out there as well, which were nice.”
“Some great burgers,” says Dave, who knows what’s important. Worth going all the way just for that? “I love a burger.”
What do you think of your fans? asks one of my friends. “Tell him I’d like to have sex with the male fans and go shopping with the girl fans,” says Matt.
Dave reaches for the next card as fast as he can while trying to keep a straight face.
“Swiftly moving on…” says Oli.
Favourite film. Dave is happy he’s picked up this card. “Quite funnily enough, I’m the perfect person to ask that question to.”
“Mine’s Pirates of the Caribbean!” shouts Matt excitedly. “Ohh! Ohh!”
“Disregard Matt because he’s a film pleb and he doesn’t know anything about the medium,” Dave orders.
“Pirates of the Caribbean!”
“Mine’s Usual Suspects,” says Oli.
“Usual Suspects is my favourite…” begins Dave.
“I’ve already chose it. You can’t have it.” A few punches are thrown.
“Ow! Or maybe Shawshank Redemption,” Dave continues, between thumping Oli. “Or maybe True Romance…They’re my three.”
“Did you read that in a magazine?” says Oli, who I’d always assumed to be the quiet one, but who has turned out to be something of a cheeky so-and-so.
“Yeah.”
“Or do you have any opinions of your own?”
“I like Gladiator as well,” says Matt. “I like the bit where he goes (does tough Yorkshire Gladiator voice) ‘Husband of raped wife… father of murdered child…’…”
“What, that cheesiest bit in any film ever?” asks Dave.
“Yes. Then he goes ‘I am Maximus Decimus Meridius.’ And then he kills them all. Gladiator. Right film.”
“I’ve only seen it once all the way through. I just don’t like Russell Crowe, I think he’s a dick,” says Dave, and they discuss exactly how awful Master and Commander is.
“I got bored, I was like I don’t really get this,” admits Oli.
“I did but I committed 40 minutes of my life to it, I wanted to find out what happened. And I actually found out what happened,” says Matt.
“So Suzy, level with us, is this actually an interview or did you just want to come and sit in the dressing room and talk to us?” says Matt, looking at me sideways. Yes, you’re onto me. I can’t get enough of stealing Doritos from your crap rider.
Oli quite rightly points out there will be a bottle of rum waiting on my desk when I get back to work, and I think they’re a little jealous they just have warm beer. I get the feeling that after the Town Hall gig in a few hours, it will be a long time before they have to buy their own drinks again.
--------
The Pigeon Detectives debut album ‘Wait For Me’ is released on May 28th through Dance To The Radio.
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Gig Reviews - May 07 - The Pigeon Detectives
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in May 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
The Pigeon Detectives / Air Traffic / Cheap Hotel
@ Southampton University, 21st May 2007
It’s not very often I go to a gig and find two queues, one for the over 18s (wrinklies) and one for the under-18s (kiddies). It’s even rarer the kiddies seem to be outnumbering the wrinklies, but that’s what’s happening here. I’m feeling quite old and jaded. This crowd of youths are here for The Pigeon Detectives' rare jaunt to South Coast Central.
First on stage is Cheap Hotel. The girls in the band are carving out an image for themselves as snarling, pseudo-Sapphic types, but there’s a mix of styles. Anna Calvi strides around menacingly in her tight dress and stilettos, striking her battered guitar as if she couldn’t care, all the while scowling through red lips. Bassist Ulli Mattsson, who I think has glitter on her face, balances on one leg in her red jeans with her perfectly layered hair tossing around her know-all grin. The picture is completed by unsmiling Gregg Braden on drums, tossing his drumsticks to one side and putting up with the girls repeatedly bashing the cymbals with their guitars.
They play grungy, sexy blues rock and sound like they’ve improved considerably since I saw them a few months previously. It’s just their mix of dress styles and onstage personalities seem slightly at odds with each other. At the end, Anna simply throws her guitar onto the floor and walks off stage. Half the audience clap but the rest aren’t quite sure what’s going on. Everyone’s divided, but I find them enjoyable.
Air Traffic are next. They're from Bournemouth and supported Mr Hudson and The Library just the previous day in neighbouring Portsmouth, so they have plenty of fans in the screaming crowd. Interestingly, they look like McFly but their songs are more Keane/The Feeling, with even a dash of Queen. The guitars are pretty rocky and the piano is excellent. During one of their songs, the guitarists sling their instruments over their shoulders and start beating away on two large drums, with ‘proper drummer’ sitting like a lemon for half the track before joining in.
‘Charlotte’, ‘Never Even Told Me Her Name’ and ‘Shooting Star’ are amongst the poppy, piano-led tracks which are blasted out. Vocalist/pianist Chris Wall has earplugs in so he can't hear the girls screaming for him, which is just as well because it would have distracted him somewhat. Final track ‘Just Abuse Me’ is particularly mind-blowing. Air Traffic are very good, very good indeed, and their commercial sound suggests fame is just around the corner. They go down almost as well as the headliners, with the crowd clapping for some time after they’ve departed the stage.
It’s the last week of The Pigeon Detectives’ tour, which will culminate in a few sold out gigs at Leeds Town Hall at the weekend. They last played in Southampton in July at the Joiners during the summer heatwave which left everyone crammed in the tiny room sweating their bits off. Today’s venue is considerably larger and Southern crowds are generally less manic - although by the end, dripping with sweat, it’s not much cooler.
Two tracks into their rousing, energetic indie rock and there are already crowdsurfers. Songs tonight include latest b-side ‘Dick’ead’, ‘Can’t Control Myself’, singles ‘Romantic Type’, ‘You Know I Love You’ and ‘I Found Out’.
‘Caught In Your Trap’, the song which usually results in various frilly/giant panties being thrown at the stage, is instead received with a pair of socks, leading singer Matt Bowman to label Southampton the unsexiest city on this tour. ‘Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye’ is his cue to leap into the crowd and sing to a girl who was so excited she screamed loudly in his face.
The band don’t appear too tired despite having played first in Brighton and then up in Preston over the last few days. Everyone is energetic – sometimes a bit too much so, with Matt whacking Oli Main so hard with his mic the poor guitarist writhed around in agony and was seen later that night with a glass of ice pressed against his swollen hand. Bassist Dave Best and guitarist Ryan Wilson bob around on their side of the stage, with Dave occasionally sprinting for the mic and on one occasion missing it.
‘Left Alone’ and ‘Wait For Me’ are also given (reasonably) rare outings, and their raw rockiness is able to get the crowd singing along even if they haven’t heard the tracks before. Album track ‘Stop Or Go’ is also aired, with anyone singing the words being jokingly sworn at for downloading the album illegally.
The bouncers do their best to cool the crowd down by liberally spraying us with what looks like those things you use in your greenhouse to ward off bugs. It’s a fairly good idea and makes a change from a bottle of water being slopped down your top; however if you’re a glasses-wearer then you’re left squinting through a hazy mist, and as soon as it clears they come round again.
Single ‘I’m Not Sorry’, released today and possibly the only reason a few of the crowd bought tickets, gets the biggest cheers and pushing. It’s the final song, which lets the crowd and band give it their all. The Pigeon Detectives detractors claim they’re not doing anything different to the other lad-rock bands, but if it’s not broke why fix it?
It was a brilliant and lively night. Air Traffic are very expressive and the Pigeon Detectives are so full of laddish energy. All that remained was to wipe the sweat from my face, the water mist from my glasses, then it was time to go outside and cool down a bit. Things have got bigger and better for the Pigeons since they were last in Southampton, and they’re still on their way up.
Cheap Hotel
Air Traffic
The Pigeon Detectives
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in May 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
The Pigeon Detectives / Air Traffic / Cheap Hotel
@ Southampton University, 21st May 2007
It’s not very often I go to a gig and find two queues, one for the over 18s (wrinklies) and one for the under-18s (kiddies). It’s even rarer the kiddies seem to be outnumbering the wrinklies, but that’s what’s happening here. I’m feeling quite old and jaded. This crowd of youths are here for The Pigeon Detectives' rare jaunt to South Coast Central.
First on stage is Cheap Hotel. The girls in the band are carving out an image for themselves as snarling, pseudo-Sapphic types, but there’s a mix of styles. Anna Calvi strides around menacingly in her tight dress and stilettos, striking her battered guitar as if she couldn’t care, all the while scowling through red lips. Bassist Ulli Mattsson, who I think has glitter on her face, balances on one leg in her red jeans with her perfectly layered hair tossing around her know-all grin. The picture is completed by unsmiling Gregg Braden on drums, tossing his drumsticks to one side and putting up with the girls repeatedly bashing the cymbals with their guitars.
They play grungy, sexy blues rock and sound like they’ve improved considerably since I saw them a few months previously. It’s just their mix of dress styles and onstage personalities seem slightly at odds with each other. At the end, Anna simply throws her guitar onto the floor and walks off stage. Half the audience clap but the rest aren’t quite sure what’s going on. Everyone’s divided, but I find them enjoyable.
Air Traffic are next. They're from Bournemouth and supported Mr Hudson and The Library just the previous day in neighbouring Portsmouth, so they have plenty of fans in the screaming crowd. Interestingly, they look like McFly but their songs are more Keane/The Feeling, with even a dash of Queen. The guitars are pretty rocky and the piano is excellent. During one of their songs, the guitarists sling their instruments over their shoulders and start beating away on two large drums, with ‘proper drummer’ sitting like a lemon for half the track before joining in.
‘Charlotte’, ‘Never Even Told Me Her Name’ and ‘Shooting Star’ are amongst the poppy, piano-led tracks which are blasted out. Vocalist/pianist Chris Wall has earplugs in so he can't hear the girls screaming for him, which is just as well because it would have distracted him somewhat. Final track ‘Just Abuse Me’ is particularly mind-blowing. Air Traffic are very good, very good indeed, and their commercial sound suggests fame is just around the corner. They go down almost as well as the headliners, with the crowd clapping for some time after they’ve departed the stage.
It’s the last week of The Pigeon Detectives’ tour, which will culminate in a few sold out gigs at Leeds Town Hall at the weekend. They last played in Southampton in July at the Joiners during the summer heatwave which left everyone crammed in the tiny room sweating their bits off. Today’s venue is considerably larger and Southern crowds are generally less manic - although by the end, dripping with sweat, it’s not much cooler.
Two tracks into their rousing, energetic indie rock and there are already crowdsurfers. Songs tonight include latest b-side ‘Dick’ead’, ‘Can’t Control Myself’, singles ‘Romantic Type’, ‘You Know I Love You’ and ‘I Found Out’.
‘Caught In Your Trap’, the song which usually results in various frilly/giant panties being thrown at the stage, is instead received with a pair of socks, leading singer Matt Bowman to label Southampton the unsexiest city on this tour. ‘Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye’ is his cue to leap into the crowd and sing to a girl who was so excited she screamed loudly in his face.
The band don’t appear too tired despite having played first in Brighton and then up in Preston over the last few days. Everyone is energetic – sometimes a bit too much so, with Matt whacking Oli Main so hard with his mic the poor guitarist writhed around in agony and was seen later that night with a glass of ice pressed against his swollen hand. Bassist Dave Best and guitarist Ryan Wilson bob around on their side of the stage, with Dave occasionally sprinting for the mic and on one occasion missing it.
‘Left Alone’ and ‘Wait For Me’ are also given (reasonably) rare outings, and their raw rockiness is able to get the crowd singing along even if they haven’t heard the tracks before. Album track ‘Stop Or Go’ is also aired, with anyone singing the words being jokingly sworn at for downloading the album illegally.
The bouncers do their best to cool the crowd down by liberally spraying us with what looks like those things you use in your greenhouse to ward off bugs. It’s a fairly good idea and makes a change from a bottle of water being slopped down your top; however if you’re a glasses-wearer then you’re left squinting through a hazy mist, and as soon as it clears they come round again.
Single ‘I’m Not Sorry’, released today and possibly the only reason a few of the crowd bought tickets, gets the biggest cheers and pushing. It’s the final song, which lets the crowd and band give it their all. The Pigeon Detectives detractors claim they’re not doing anything different to the other lad-rock bands, but if it’s not broke why fix it?
It was a brilliant and lively night. Air Traffic are very expressive and the Pigeon Detectives are so full of laddish energy. All that remained was to wipe the sweat from my face, the water mist from my glasses, then it was time to go outside and cool down a bit. Things have got bigger and better for the Pigeons since they were last in Southampton, and they’re still on their way up.
Cheap Hotel
Air Traffic
The Pigeon Detectives
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Interview - Pull Tiger Tail
Handily I was off to Brighton for their gig anyway when I managed to get Pull Tiger Tail for an interview. This meant working on a Sunday - a day off - when I was meant to be whiling away time with friends. Music journalism sure eats into your spare time.
Not only that, my brain was highly confused with the mixture of work and play. The Pigeon Detectives knew me as a fan, the kind who's always bloody there, and here I was sat in their dressing room interviewing their support band. I got a few puzzled looks.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in Mar 07
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
PULL TIGER TAIL
Marcus Ratcliff
Davo McConville
Jack Hamson
Brighton is a beautifully lively city by the sea, except at the moment it feels everything is being sucked into it by the strong wind. There are birds flocking in the skies like they're auditioning for a beer advert and I want some candyfloss, although turning up with pink gunk in my hair might appear more unprofessional than usual. After chasing my hat along the seafront a number of times, I find the smart Audio Club, where tonight the lovely Pull Tiger Tail – aka Marcus Ratcliff, Davo McConville and Jack Hamson - are supporting the Pigeon Detectives. Through the iron gates and down the whitewashed steps, you could be forgiven for thinking this is some sort of prison until you get into the cosy room and spy the bar.
We sneak into the dressing room, which just appears to be a long sofa in a metallic room reminiscent of a posh tin of Spam, and there’s also a strong sense of pink neon. Sadly most of the room is in darkness and we can’t find a light switch, which is a shame because PTT are meant to be reading their own question cards. Doesn't matter anyway - “We can’t read,” deadpans Davo.
I ask them to introduce themselves into the dictaphone so I can recognise their voices when I play the recording back.
“I’m Jack, I play drums.”
“I’m Davo, I play bass.”
“And I’m Marcus, and I play guitar.” They burst into laughter. They’ve all spoken in exactly the same dull monotone.
“Are you going to be able to recognise us?” asks Someone (could be Davo). Come on, I’m a journalist. I’ll just make most of it up anyway.
Pull Tiger Tail are from Stratford-Upon-Avon and originally met at school when they were about 11. “Some bands get together because they’re good musicians together, and we didn’t, basically,” says Davo. They’re in their early twenties now, and the band first came about in 2005. “We decided these people would be the people we’d have chosen from the back of an advert in The Times,” Davo continues. He might describe himself as the bassist, but anyone who sees the band live would also see him darting between moog, drum pad and vocal duties, all the while striking self-conscious, artistic poses.
Despite forming in summer 2005, the band didn’t do much really for another six months. “We were busy at uni,” explains Davo.
“And taking a name is a very long and arduous process,” says Marcus, the smiley lead vocalist and guitarist.“But we lived together and we rehearsed in our basement anyway,” says Davo. “So everything was kind of set up for whoever wanted to play regardless.”
Their first gig as Pull Tiger Tail was at the Tatty Bogle club in London.
“It’s now defunct – think it’s turned into a trendy wine bar,” says Marcus.
“I think it’s turned into a NatWest,” says Jack from beneath his neckerchief.
“Has it really?” says Marcus with surprise.
“Other way around.”
“Exact opposite.”
“Er yeah… it was good,” says Davo. “It was sold out. It was sold out so our friends couldn’t get in.” Were you headlining it? “No. That was our only sold out gig for months!” Marcus sniggers in the background. “About a year I’d say. Until now,” says Davo. “And it’s still nothing to do with us!” laughs Jack. Oh, bless. “Thanks!”
Jack picks up the first question card. “This is Jack,” the others announce, in case my voice recognition skills aren’t up to much. The windows on our rail replacement bus service were steamed up earlier, and my friends wondered what you’d write on them?
“What I generally used to do was make like a swipe, a kind of random shape, then try and make a picture out of it,” says Jack. “I once had this really great skull that was travelling and had this mane.”
“Like a lion skull,” says Davo.
“Yeah,” says Jack.
“None of us expected that.” That is impressive. I usually manage a smiley face.
“I hate steamy windows,” says Davo, miserably. “’Cause it’s just condensed breath and sweat. It’s gross.” Pull Tiger Tail pause and contemplate in disgust.
“When it’s like the three of us in the back of a van it’s fine.”
The interview is briefly interrupted by a knackered looking Matt Bowman of the Pigeon Detectives creeping in and whispering “Sorry! Sorry!” before lying down on the far end of the sofa. You get the impression if he wasn’t in public he would have crawled in on hands and knees, or possibly just laid on the floor snoring. “Congratulations!” says Jack. The Pigeon Detectives ‘Romantic Type’ single has just gone into the chart at 19.
“Oh cheers, thank you,” says Matt weakly. “It’s so good,” say PTT. Matt goes back to dying quietly in the corner.
Pull Tiger Tail’s first single was the bouncy ‘Animator’. The band was responsible for designing the sleeves – one thousand of them. Individually. What were they like?
“The designs I did in particular?” wonders Marcus. “They were brilliant. Well it wasn’t until we got the thousand copies of the single home that we realised how many a thousand was. All of our bedrooms were plastered in them and they just took over our entire house ‘cause we were basically doing things that took a long time to dry. So we had to lay them all out flat over everything we had. The things we did to them were sticker them, sometimes we wrote on them, spray-painted them, ticked on them, I don’t know. A lot of things.”
“Sorry to anyone who got the first few,” says Davo. “They were just – sticker, sticker. Done. Then we were like: we’re on 900. Wash that one up in the sink.” Spill tea on it, I suggest. “Did I do some ones with tea marks on them?” Davo wonders. “I wanted to.”
It’s a busy year up ahead, with the current live shows to be followed up with next single ‘Let’s Lightning’, a fun slice of indie pop with a cracking opening. What does ‘Let’s Lightning’ mean exactly? “What, the name or the song?” asks Marcus. “That gives an indication that the name is nothing to do with the song. The name means… I don’t know really. It’s about taking control of things.”
“It’s like let’s create,” says Davo. “And lightning’s suitably sort of violent and something. Well it is about kind of breaking yourself out of habits and trying to do something.”
“So it goes with the song quite well actually, now I come to think about it,” says Marcus.
Have they done a promo video for it yet? “We have actually. It primarily consists of us, many versions of us, dancing around an evolving cactus,” explains Marcus. It was the director’s idea – “and his was the most insane idea, so we went with it!” They didn’t want to go with anything too obviously linked with certain lyrics, calling literal interpretations 'quite ham-fisted.'
“If the director’s got an idea and you’ve got your song… as long as he does what he does well, then it will come out well,” says Jack. “We wanted the director to have a strong idea of what he wanted to do to bring something else to the song. I mean, to me that’s the point to videos. They are promotional but they can also be quite artistic. So it’s important to have someone with a strong idea of where they want to go, to complement the song rather than just promote it.”
“You can hear the song on radio, you can hear the song on CD. The video should bring something new to it,” Davo continues. “So yeah, we feel quite strongly about music videos.”
Are you in charge of a lot of the artwork around you?
“Yes, we have control over everything and our label is really good with that and they’ll pretty much let us do what we want,” says Jack. “Apparently ‘Pablo Honey’ by Radiohead, they turned up one day and were told ‘This is your artwork’.”
“For a band like us who want to be able to look after and kind of cultivate everything there is to do with us, that would be a complete nightmare to turn up and have someone already decided something for you,” says Marcus. “Jack always has a hand in the artwork.”
“I think that what we’re doing at the moment is we’re building up to the album release so with the singles we’re kind of hinting at this bigger thing but you’re not going to know what it is until you see the album and then it’ll be ‘oh, that’s what that was’ which we’re quite excited about,” says Jack.
And after ‘Let’s Lightning’, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff planned for this year. “Playing the festivals, touring the world, you know, the usual.” The whole world, eh?
“The - whole – world,” says Davo slowly. “Our album comes out, at the end of summer I think.” They don’t have a name for it yet: “We always like to leave things until the last minute then have a massive rush of brainstorming,” says Marcus. He speaks with a rising intonation, which combined with his rough blonde hair and big grin gives the appearance of a cheerful surfer. “That’s how it all works. Perfect.”
“That’s like our main plans for the year,” says Davo. “Our main plan I think is trying to trick everyone who books things for us into giving us more days off.” How are you getting on with that so far? “Really badly,” says Davo. He doesn’t sound overjoyed about it. “Our other plans are along the same lines of trying to trick someone into putting us back in a studio.”
“We trick people into coming to the gigs, we trick people with our songs when they’re here…” says Marcus. Damn you tricksters, I say.
“We’ve already recorded our album,” says Davo. “I’m not saying we’ve got new songs ready to record a new one, but I think we’d like to be back in the studio pretty soon. We won’t be, but we’d like to be.” It’s going to be a major change - from playing in their basement to relocating the process. Pull Tiger Tail have a few ideas where to go.
“I’m thinking like a mansion in the country,” says Davo, whose steady and serious tone of voice doesn’t quite hide his wicked sense of humour.
“Yeah, somewhere really good.” Barbados? “Yeah, anywhere like that,” says Marcus.
“Montserrat.”
“We want to be inspired by the sea for our next album.” That’s all right, you’ve got some just out there. “We’ll stay here then.”
“Yeah but the sea has to go hand in hand with the sun,” says Davo. “And the sand. Two things that Brighton is missing.” It really is. Did you have a walk around out there earlier? “No, we only just arrived… we’ll have a look later.”
“When it’s dark,” says Davo. “It’s always better when it’s dark.” I warn them it’s windy.
“Are there any good fish and chip shops you can recommend?” asks Davo. Sadly I’ve no idea as I’m from near Portsmouth; which isn’t too distant, just a bit far to drive for a cod supper. There’s a Harry Ramsden’s on the corner and they’re meant to be good.
“It’s a chain. We could get that anywhere. I want to find a real Brighton fish and chip shop,” says Davo.
Are you playing any festivals this year? “Hope so,” says Davo.“It’s another last minute thing,” explains Marcus.
“There’s a couple that hopefully we’ll be playing,” says Davo, with his voice almost drowned out by the sound of the drums being set up, “and there’s a couple that we’re trying to get our people to get us, like Benicassim in Spain and Rock Am Ring in Germany.”
“Saw the line up for that the other day and thought we’ve got to be on that,” says Jack. Who’s playing there? “Linkin Park, Smashing Pumpkins… all the greats.” Oh brilliant. That’s your crowd.
“The Linkin Park crowd is, yeah,” says Davo. “Our sound guy is in the van currently subjecting us to a nu-metal marathon. It’s horrible. Horribly great.” I’m so sorry. Did you have that in the tour bus all the way down? “Yes,” they say quickly. “Limp Bizkit…”
“It’s enough to make me sit in the front and get away from the stereo,” says Marcus, flashing a brilliant grin.
“We’re doing a festival in Austria called Snowbombing,” says Jack. The rest of the band perk up and call it ‘amazing’.
“They pay for ski passes,” says Davo. “But our one gig’s right at the end. I’ve never been skiing before and the other guys aren’t big skiers, and I’m sure we’ll break everything.” I don’t know how easy it is playing guitar with your arm in a sling.
“Not sure. Probably not so easily done.”
Pull Tiger Tail are doing a lot of live shows at the moment – currently with the Pigeon Detectives, then next they’re supporting Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. “Yep,” they all say.
“It was actually great the other night. We met Sam Duckworth for the first time,” says Jack. “We all happened to be in the same place at the same time…’SAM!’ ’Cause he specifically asked us to do it. And we gave him a big hug, which was quite exciting.”
“He was terrified,” admits Marcus. “He’s quite little and we’re not that little,” adds Jack.
“And we were all wasted, I think,” says Davo, “we gave him a hug and just left. It was like ‘HI!’” He does a good impression of their attack.
“I definitely didn’t talk to him after that!” says Jack with a big grin. “I assumed that the other guys did. I think they all assumed that we did. So maybe we got off to a wrong start. Hopefully we’re doing this tour split 7” with him and he’s remixing one of our songs and we’re doing one of his. We’re looking forward to it.”
“We’re looking forward to the support slots with the Killers and Kings of Leon which are surely round the corner,” says Davo.
“…And we’re obviously doing the Pigeon Detectives which is fun. They’re nice guys. And We Are Scientists, we did a couple with those last week which was also great,” says Jack. “And then we’ve got the MySpace tour, which is with lots of other really great bands (Ali Love, Hadouken!, I Say Marvin). “So we’re really excited about doing that.”
They sit there for a few minutes trying to work out the best gig they've played. “We’ll all formulate our opinions,” says Marcus. “You go first Davo,” he adds, seeing the bassist whispering into the drummer’s ear.
“No, this is your question,” says Davo, helpfully. “I’m just asking Jack what he thinks.”
“Er…” says Marcus. Tonight might be your best gig. “That’s the way to look forward to every gig,” he says. “I don’t know, that’s a kind of cheesy thing to say isn’t it. Hopefully every gig will be the best gig. Actually probably our best gig was our first gig because it was so long in arrival, and the feeling of jubilation like being back in a band and a band that I knew I wanted to be in. The first gig I was so sure we were making the kind of music that I wanted to, that I was really, really lifted.”
“My favourite was our single launch back in September,” says Jack. “There had been quite a lot of buzz around us at the time, it was sold out -” The Pigeon Detectives crash through the door and say ‘Hiya’ to all before briefly trying to squeeze on the sofa. Jack continues: “It was at the Proud Galleries in Camden and it was the first time we played ‘Animator’ and we could hear people singing back, it was mental.”
“Sorry, we weren’t trying to be rude,” says Marcus suddenly, explaining to Pigeon guitarist Ryan Wilson why they’ve turned their backs on him. Poor Ryan is trying to have a rest and a nice cup of tea but has unexpectedly found himself sat in the middle of a PTT interview. He blames the lack of light for his not noticing.
“We’re in your dressing room!” we apologise. "Sorry!"
Back to the question: “KOKO with !!!,” says Davo. “I think it was the gig that got us signed. We were the opening band of five or six? And we just acted like we were headlining.”
“That’s the first time we wore the angel wings as well,” remembers Jack.“The only time,” mutters Davo.
“The first time we did it in public,” says Jack. Normally do it in private? They laugh.
“We did a photoshoot,” explains Davo. “It was like a rebirth, I suppose.”
“It’s fun,” says Marcus, almost being drowned out by the very loud David Gray CD someone’s put on. Don’t expect to see their fans sporting angel wings – they’d tickle your nose/have your eye out in a packed venue. Instead, turn up to a gig and see the crowd wearing cardboard tiger masks, lovingly handed out by the PTT street teams.
Tell me a fact about the person on your left. We’re running out of time, so this is a quickfire round. It’s Jack’s turn, and he should be telling me something about Davo. “Erm,” he says and goes very quiet. For a quite a while.
Marcus tells me his own iPod was stolen several months back but he’s currently listening to Bjork ‘Medúlla’ and Tapes ‘n Tapes.
“Our influences are everything,” says Davo. “Devo. David Bowie. The Beatles. Led Zeppelin. Limp Bizkit. Pixies. Kula Shaker.”
“We never made a conscious decision on what were going to be our influences,” Marcus shouts over the deafening music being blasted next door where the roadies are doing their thing. Back to Jack. He’s still sitting there looking slightly worried. Have you only just met each other or something?
“Oh, er,” he says. “I’m not good at these ones. I’ll think about it, and I’ll find you later and tell you off the record.” He doesn’t, the git. “That’s one of the funny ones, I’m not good at the funny ones.” I promise to do more boring ones next time.
-----
I meet up with my friends in the pub across the road and we go in search of more alcohol before the gig. Passing a fish and chip shop on the corner, we see Pull Tiger Tail sat on white plastic chairs in the corner waiting patiently for their tea, illuminated by the insanely bright lighting. One of them has a pickled egg, my friend informs me.
“Some people are suggesting that Pull Tiger Tail are going to be one of 2007's biggest breakthrough bands. Pull Tiger Tail think that would be nice” says their record label.
I think so too.
--------
‘Let’s Lightning’ will be available on CD, 7”, download and limited 10” from March 26th.
Pull Tiger Tail
MySpace
Not only that, my brain was highly confused with the mixture of work and play. The Pigeon Detectives knew me as a fan, the kind who's always bloody there, and here I was sat in their dressing room interviewing their support band. I got a few puzzled looks.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in Mar 07
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
PULL TIGER TAIL
Marcus Ratcliff
Davo McConville
Jack Hamson
Brighton is a beautifully lively city by the sea, except at the moment it feels everything is being sucked into it by the strong wind. There are birds flocking in the skies like they're auditioning for a beer advert and I want some candyfloss, although turning up with pink gunk in my hair might appear more unprofessional than usual. After chasing my hat along the seafront a number of times, I find the smart Audio Club, where tonight the lovely Pull Tiger Tail – aka Marcus Ratcliff, Davo McConville and Jack Hamson - are supporting the Pigeon Detectives. Through the iron gates and down the whitewashed steps, you could be forgiven for thinking this is some sort of prison until you get into the cosy room and spy the bar.
We sneak into the dressing room, which just appears to be a long sofa in a metallic room reminiscent of a posh tin of Spam, and there’s also a strong sense of pink neon. Sadly most of the room is in darkness and we can’t find a light switch, which is a shame because PTT are meant to be reading their own question cards. Doesn't matter anyway - “We can’t read,” deadpans Davo.
I ask them to introduce themselves into the dictaphone so I can recognise their voices when I play the recording back.
“I’m Jack, I play drums.”
“I’m Davo, I play bass.”
“And I’m Marcus, and I play guitar.” They burst into laughter. They’ve all spoken in exactly the same dull monotone.
“Are you going to be able to recognise us?” asks Someone (could be Davo). Come on, I’m a journalist. I’ll just make most of it up anyway.
Pull Tiger Tail are from Stratford-Upon-Avon and originally met at school when they were about 11. “Some bands get together because they’re good musicians together, and we didn’t, basically,” says Davo. They’re in their early twenties now, and the band first came about in 2005. “We decided these people would be the people we’d have chosen from the back of an advert in The Times,” Davo continues. He might describe himself as the bassist, but anyone who sees the band live would also see him darting between moog, drum pad and vocal duties, all the while striking self-conscious, artistic poses.
Despite forming in summer 2005, the band didn’t do much really for another six months. “We were busy at uni,” explains Davo.
“And taking a name is a very long and arduous process,” says Marcus, the smiley lead vocalist and guitarist.“But we lived together and we rehearsed in our basement anyway,” says Davo. “So everything was kind of set up for whoever wanted to play regardless.”
Their first gig as Pull Tiger Tail was at the Tatty Bogle club in London.
“It’s now defunct – think it’s turned into a trendy wine bar,” says Marcus.
“I think it’s turned into a NatWest,” says Jack from beneath his neckerchief.
“Has it really?” says Marcus with surprise.
“Other way around.”
“Exact opposite.”
“Er yeah… it was good,” says Davo. “It was sold out. It was sold out so our friends couldn’t get in.” Were you headlining it? “No. That was our only sold out gig for months!” Marcus sniggers in the background. “About a year I’d say. Until now,” says Davo. “And it’s still nothing to do with us!” laughs Jack. Oh, bless. “Thanks!”
Jack picks up the first question card. “This is Jack,” the others announce, in case my voice recognition skills aren’t up to much. The windows on our rail replacement bus service were steamed up earlier, and my friends wondered what you’d write on them?
“What I generally used to do was make like a swipe, a kind of random shape, then try and make a picture out of it,” says Jack. “I once had this really great skull that was travelling and had this mane.”
“Like a lion skull,” says Davo.
“Yeah,” says Jack.
“None of us expected that.” That is impressive. I usually manage a smiley face.
“I hate steamy windows,” says Davo, miserably. “’Cause it’s just condensed breath and sweat. It’s gross.” Pull Tiger Tail pause and contemplate in disgust.
“When it’s like the three of us in the back of a van it’s fine.”
The interview is briefly interrupted by a knackered looking Matt Bowman of the Pigeon Detectives creeping in and whispering “Sorry! Sorry!” before lying down on the far end of the sofa. You get the impression if he wasn’t in public he would have crawled in on hands and knees, or possibly just laid on the floor snoring. “Congratulations!” says Jack. The Pigeon Detectives ‘Romantic Type’ single has just gone into the chart at 19.
“Oh cheers, thank you,” says Matt weakly. “It’s so good,” say PTT. Matt goes back to dying quietly in the corner.
Pull Tiger Tail’s first single was the bouncy ‘Animator’. The band was responsible for designing the sleeves – one thousand of them. Individually. What were they like?
“The designs I did in particular?” wonders Marcus. “They were brilliant. Well it wasn’t until we got the thousand copies of the single home that we realised how many a thousand was. All of our bedrooms were plastered in them and they just took over our entire house ‘cause we were basically doing things that took a long time to dry. So we had to lay them all out flat over everything we had. The things we did to them were sticker them, sometimes we wrote on them, spray-painted them, ticked on them, I don’t know. A lot of things.”
“Sorry to anyone who got the first few,” says Davo. “They were just – sticker, sticker. Done. Then we were like: we’re on 900. Wash that one up in the sink.” Spill tea on it, I suggest. “Did I do some ones with tea marks on them?” Davo wonders. “I wanted to.”
It’s a busy year up ahead, with the current live shows to be followed up with next single ‘Let’s Lightning’, a fun slice of indie pop with a cracking opening. What does ‘Let’s Lightning’ mean exactly? “What, the name or the song?” asks Marcus. “That gives an indication that the name is nothing to do with the song. The name means… I don’t know really. It’s about taking control of things.”
“It’s like let’s create,” says Davo. “And lightning’s suitably sort of violent and something. Well it is about kind of breaking yourself out of habits and trying to do something.”
“So it goes with the song quite well actually, now I come to think about it,” says Marcus.
Have they done a promo video for it yet? “We have actually. It primarily consists of us, many versions of us, dancing around an evolving cactus,” explains Marcus. It was the director’s idea – “and his was the most insane idea, so we went with it!” They didn’t want to go with anything too obviously linked with certain lyrics, calling literal interpretations 'quite ham-fisted.'
“If the director’s got an idea and you’ve got your song… as long as he does what he does well, then it will come out well,” says Jack. “We wanted the director to have a strong idea of what he wanted to do to bring something else to the song. I mean, to me that’s the point to videos. They are promotional but they can also be quite artistic. So it’s important to have someone with a strong idea of where they want to go, to complement the song rather than just promote it.”
“You can hear the song on radio, you can hear the song on CD. The video should bring something new to it,” Davo continues. “So yeah, we feel quite strongly about music videos.”
Are you in charge of a lot of the artwork around you?
“Yes, we have control over everything and our label is really good with that and they’ll pretty much let us do what we want,” says Jack. “Apparently ‘Pablo Honey’ by Radiohead, they turned up one day and were told ‘This is your artwork’.”
“For a band like us who want to be able to look after and kind of cultivate everything there is to do with us, that would be a complete nightmare to turn up and have someone already decided something for you,” says Marcus. “Jack always has a hand in the artwork.”
“I think that what we’re doing at the moment is we’re building up to the album release so with the singles we’re kind of hinting at this bigger thing but you’re not going to know what it is until you see the album and then it’ll be ‘oh, that’s what that was’ which we’re quite excited about,” says Jack.
And after ‘Let’s Lightning’, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff planned for this year. “Playing the festivals, touring the world, you know, the usual.” The whole world, eh?
“The - whole – world,” says Davo slowly. “Our album comes out, at the end of summer I think.” They don’t have a name for it yet: “We always like to leave things until the last minute then have a massive rush of brainstorming,” says Marcus. He speaks with a rising intonation, which combined with his rough blonde hair and big grin gives the appearance of a cheerful surfer. “That’s how it all works. Perfect.”
“That’s like our main plans for the year,” says Davo. “Our main plan I think is trying to trick everyone who books things for us into giving us more days off.” How are you getting on with that so far? “Really badly,” says Davo. He doesn’t sound overjoyed about it. “Our other plans are along the same lines of trying to trick someone into putting us back in a studio.”
“We trick people into coming to the gigs, we trick people with our songs when they’re here…” says Marcus. Damn you tricksters, I say.
“We’ve already recorded our album,” says Davo. “I’m not saying we’ve got new songs ready to record a new one, but I think we’d like to be back in the studio pretty soon. We won’t be, but we’d like to be.” It’s going to be a major change - from playing in their basement to relocating the process. Pull Tiger Tail have a few ideas where to go.
“I’m thinking like a mansion in the country,” says Davo, whose steady and serious tone of voice doesn’t quite hide his wicked sense of humour.
“Yeah, somewhere really good.” Barbados? “Yeah, anywhere like that,” says Marcus.
“Montserrat.”
“We want to be inspired by the sea for our next album.” That’s all right, you’ve got some just out there. “We’ll stay here then.”
“Yeah but the sea has to go hand in hand with the sun,” says Davo. “And the sand. Two things that Brighton is missing.” It really is. Did you have a walk around out there earlier? “No, we only just arrived… we’ll have a look later.”
“When it’s dark,” says Davo. “It’s always better when it’s dark.” I warn them it’s windy.
“Are there any good fish and chip shops you can recommend?” asks Davo. Sadly I’ve no idea as I’m from near Portsmouth; which isn’t too distant, just a bit far to drive for a cod supper. There’s a Harry Ramsden’s on the corner and they’re meant to be good.
“It’s a chain. We could get that anywhere. I want to find a real Brighton fish and chip shop,” says Davo.
Are you playing any festivals this year? “Hope so,” says Davo.“It’s another last minute thing,” explains Marcus.
“There’s a couple that hopefully we’ll be playing,” says Davo, with his voice almost drowned out by the sound of the drums being set up, “and there’s a couple that we’re trying to get our people to get us, like Benicassim in Spain and Rock Am Ring in Germany.”
“Saw the line up for that the other day and thought we’ve got to be on that,” says Jack. Who’s playing there? “Linkin Park, Smashing Pumpkins… all the greats.” Oh brilliant. That’s your crowd.
“The Linkin Park crowd is, yeah,” says Davo. “Our sound guy is in the van currently subjecting us to a nu-metal marathon. It’s horrible. Horribly great.” I’m so sorry. Did you have that in the tour bus all the way down? “Yes,” they say quickly. “Limp Bizkit…”
“It’s enough to make me sit in the front and get away from the stereo,” says Marcus, flashing a brilliant grin.
“We’re doing a festival in Austria called Snowbombing,” says Jack. The rest of the band perk up and call it ‘amazing’.
“They pay for ski passes,” says Davo. “But our one gig’s right at the end. I’ve never been skiing before and the other guys aren’t big skiers, and I’m sure we’ll break everything.” I don’t know how easy it is playing guitar with your arm in a sling.
“Not sure. Probably not so easily done.”
Pull Tiger Tail are doing a lot of live shows at the moment – currently with the Pigeon Detectives, then next they’re supporting Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. “Yep,” they all say.
“It was actually great the other night. We met Sam Duckworth for the first time,” says Jack. “We all happened to be in the same place at the same time…’SAM!’ ’Cause he specifically asked us to do it. And we gave him a big hug, which was quite exciting.”
“He was terrified,” admits Marcus. “He’s quite little and we’re not that little,” adds Jack.
“And we were all wasted, I think,” says Davo, “we gave him a hug and just left. It was like ‘HI!’” He does a good impression of their attack.
“I definitely didn’t talk to him after that!” says Jack with a big grin. “I assumed that the other guys did. I think they all assumed that we did. So maybe we got off to a wrong start. Hopefully we’re doing this tour split 7” with him and he’s remixing one of our songs and we’re doing one of his. We’re looking forward to it.”
“We’re looking forward to the support slots with the Killers and Kings of Leon which are surely round the corner,” says Davo.
“…And we’re obviously doing the Pigeon Detectives which is fun. They’re nice guys. And We Are Scientists, we did a couple with those last week which was also great,” says Jack. “And then we’ve got the MySpace tour, which is with lots of other really great bands (Ali Love, Hadouken!, I Say Marvin). “So we’re really excited about doing that.”
They sit there for a few minutes trying to work out the best gig they've played. “We’ll all formulate our opinions,” says Marcus. “You go first Davo,” he adds, seeing the bassist whispering into the drummer’s ear.
“No, this is your question,” says Davo, helpfully. “I’m just asking Jack what he thinks.”
“Er…” says Marcus. Tonight might be your best gig. “That’s the way to look forward to every gig,” he says. “I don’t know, that’s a kind of cheesy thing to say isn’t it. Hopefully every gig will be the best gig. Actually probably our best gig was our first gig because it was so long in arrival, and the feeling of jubilation like being back in a band and a band that I knew I wanted to be in. The first gig I was so sure we were making the kind of music that I wanted to, that I was really, really lifted.”
“My favourite was our single launch back in September,” says Jack. “There had been quite a lot of buzz around us at the time, it was sold out -” The Pigeon Detectives crash through the door and say ‘Hiya’ to all before briefly trying to squeeze on the sofa. Jack continues: “It was at the Proud Galleries in Camden and it was the first time we played ‘Animator’ and we could hear people singing back, it was mental.”
“Sorry, we weren’t trying to be rude,” says Marcus suddenly, explaining to Pigeon guitarist Ryan Wilson why they’ve turned their backs on him. Poor Ryan is trying to have a rest and a nice cup of tea but has unexpectedly found himself sat in the middle of a PTT interview. He blames the lack of light for his not noticing.
“We’re in your dressing room!” we apologise. "Sorry!"
Back to the question: “KOKO with !!!,” says Davo. “I think it was the gig that got us signed. We were the opening band of five or six? And we just acted like we were headlining.”
“That’s the first time we wore the angel wings as well,” remembers Jack.“The only time,” mutters Davo.
“The first time we did it in public,” says Jack. Normally do it in private? They laugh.
“We did a photoshoot,” explains Davo. “It was like a rebirth, I suppose.”
“It’s fun,” says Marcus, almost being drowned out by the very loud David Gray CD someone’s put on. Don’t expect to see their fans sporting angel wings – they’d tickle your nose/have your eye out in a packed venue. Instead, turn up to a gig and see the crowd wearing cardboard tiger masks, lovingly handed out by the PTT street teams.
Tell me a fact about the person on your left. We’re running out of time, so this is a quickfire round. It’s Jack’s turn, and he should be telling me something about Davo. “Erm,” he says and goes very quiet. For a quite a while.
Marcus tells me his own iPod was stolen several months back but he’s currently listening to Bjork ‘Medúlla’ and Tapes ‘n Tapes.
“Our influences are everything,” says Davo. “Devo. David Bowie. The Beatles. Led Zeppelin. Limp Bizkit. Pixies. Kula Shaker.”
“We never made a conscious decision on what were going to be our influences,” Marcus shouts over the deafening music being blasted next door where the roadies are doing their thing. Back to Jack. He’s still sitting there looking slightly worried. Have you only just met each other or something?
“Oh, er,” he says. “I’m not good at these ones. I’ll think about it, and I’ll find you later and tell you off the record.” He doesn’t, the git. “That’s one of the funny ones, I’m not good at the funny ones.” I promise to do more boring ones next time.
-----
I meet up with my friends in the pub across the road and we go in search of more alcohol before the gig. Passing a fish and chip shop on the corner, we see Pull Tiger Tail sat on white plastic chairs in the corner waiting patiently for their tea, illuminated by the insanely bright lighting. One of them has a pickled egg, my friend informs me.
“Some people are suggesting that Pull Tiger Tail are going to be one of 2007's biggest breakthrough bands. Pull Tiger Tail think that would be nice” says their record label.
I think so too.
--------
‘Let’s Lightning’ will be available on CD, 7”, download and limited 10” from March 26th.
Pull Tiger Tail
MySpace
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Gig Reviews 2006 - The Long Blondes, The Fratellis, Kaiser Chiefs, The Futureheads
I am well aware most of my gigs for 2006 include Kaiser Chiefs and the Pigeon Detectives. This is cos these are the bands I regularly pay out to see and I wasn't having my gig addiction supplied by nice PRs at this time...
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv/
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
THE LONG BLONDES
@ Southampton Joiners, 27th October 2006
I love everything that comes out of the supposedly-labelled ‘New Yorkshire’ scene. The Long Blondes are one of the most exciting bands, with their ‘glamour punk’ melodies making tidal waves in the indie underground and swamping some of the plainer rock acts of the moment.
The band is made up of the stylish Kate Jackson on vocals, Emma Chaplin on guitar, keyboards and backing vocals, Reenie Hollis on bass and backing vocals, Dorian Cox on lead guitar and vocals and the wonderfully named Screech Louder on drums. Unfortunately they suffer from frequent comparison to Pulp, which is something they are proud of but which dogs (are) every (where) single review about them. Oh, done it again. It’s easy to see why though, with the cheerful keyboards, quirky key changes and seriously cool singer.
There’s a bit of a delay before they come onstage, which is good for us because we’ve just come from a friend’s birthday party and hadn’t arrived much before 10pm. Kate strides on in a slinky, figure-hugging striped dress. It’s easy to see why she’s as well known for making the NME Cool List as the band are for their songs.
Kate sneers her way through songs, dancing away and smiling at the audience, quickly switching between friend of the fans and untouchable rock chick. She has an amazing presence and the crowd love it. The setlist includes ‘Weekend Without Makeup’, ‘Appropriation (By Any Other Name)’, ‘You Could Have Both’, ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ and it ends with a happy sing-a-long to ‘Separated By Motorways.’
My friend turns to me halfway through. “I’ve fallen in love,” he says dreamily while gazing at Kate. He’s gay. There’s a girl in the crowd called Rachel and it’s her birthday, so the band quickly adapt the lyrics of new single ‘Once And Never Again’ to “18, you’re only 18 for God’s sake, oh you don’t need a boyfriend.”
“Come back next year and we’ll sing the proper one at you,” says Kate. The birthday girl and her friends are pretty chuffed, judging from the whoops I can hear coming from the front.
There’s a stage invasion at the end. Instead of people crowdsurfing into the drum kit and being pushed offstage, everyone is stood with arms round one another and trying to sing into the microphone. Kate manages the great facial expression of having bewildered, nervous fun. It’s been a great show. The tracks are all catchy and danceable. My friend did complain that some sounded the same, but as he hadn’t heard much of their songs he may just not be used to the style.
My sister comes up to me and gives me a Long Blondes sticker which the man on the merchandise stall gave her for having good hair. She said it was free, but I’m not so sure seeing as I had to give her a tenner for a t-shirt in the first place. The Long Blondes are good, spikey, classy pop fun and I’m sure their album will get the recognition it deserves.
http://www.thelongblondes.co.uk
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02 NME ROCK AND ROLL RIOT TOUR
The Fratellis / The Dykeenies
Portsmouth Guildhall, 8th November 2006
The NME Tour stops off in Portsmouth. Or rather, half of it does
About time. This gig was meant to take place about a month earlier but a change of venue meant a change of date, and of acts.
The Horrors couldn’t make the rescheduled date because they’re causing chaos in the States while the Maccabees are rocking up Leeds. On second thoughts, perhaps we should have been refunded half the ticket price to make up for the fact that half the advertised bands weren’t there. No-one seemed to be complaining though, probably because everyone only wanted to see the Fratellis.
We arrived just before the Dykeenies took the stage. This lot are from sunny Glasgow and are Brian (vocals/synths), Alan and Steven (guitar), Andrew (bass), and John (drums).They were dressed a bit nu-rave, as I’m sure the NME would put it. I wasn’t familiar with any of their tracks, although I did know the name from reading the magazine. The NME had described them as having ‘a natural knack for constructing snappy pop songs,’ and they weren’t wrong. Every song seemed full of excitement, catchiness and synths.
“They’re the British Killers,” my friend says, quite rightly.“Hello Portsmouth!” shouts Brian. “Looking forward to the Fratellis?” Roar. “Can you understand our accents?” Another roar.
We decided to nip out for a quick lemonade as I’d been out all day and was really thirsty. The band hadn’t been playing for long so we thought it would be fine to disappear for a quick drink. We hadn’t banked on the fact that the Guildhall bar is crap. There was a queue about four people deep and twenty across. Around ten minutes later and the queue was still four people deep and twenty across. Another five minutes and we were getting hot and annoyed. A bit of exploring around the venue and we discovered all the vending machines were switched off. Great. We arrived back in to see the end of the Dykeenies as they roused everyone in readiness for the headliners. They were an excellent sounding band that I’ll definitely have to check out.
A few ripples of ‘Chelsea Dagger’ travelled around the venue as people get worked up about the Fratellis. The band haven’t been playing together for long. Jon, Barry and Mince (according to their website, Mince was a (lovable) stoner, Barry was a car thief and Jon was just a Jon) formed in spring 2005 and soon caught the attention of everyone with their raucous tunes. The first track of theirs I’d heard was ‘Cigarello’ which I thought would be a cracker live; however friends had warned me they had a habit of sounding a bit like a redneck hoedown, what with all the whoops and the country-style chords.
The Fratellis stepped on stage with a wave and a smile. Mince was proudly showing off his Scottishness by wearing a vest and drinking from a two-litre bottle of Irn-Bru onstage from behind his drums. Jon waved at a few people in the front row, then the band kicked into ‘Creepin’ Up The Backstairs’ and everyone went nuts. Other songs they played were ‘Doginabag’, ‘Flathead’, ‘Ole Black and Blue Eyes’, ‘Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night’, ‘Cigarello’, ‘Vince The Loveable Stoner’ (cue audience ‘Ah-ha’), all familiar to people with the album (as it seemed everyone in here owned) or with access to the Budhill Singles Club. Unlike many of the other shows on this tour, the whole show wasn’t taken up with the crowd singing the ‘Chelsea Dagger’ riff – yes, there was a bit of it here and there, but not as much as people say in there was in other shows.I was a bit tired after my day so I hadn’t stood too close to the front.
Halfway through I felt a bit disappointed that I wasn’t closer, with crowdsurfers and the odd beer hurling through the air and the crowd rising with their hands up in sheer joy. I was also getting fed up of the woman next to me. She looked about 45 and had clearly drunk too much. Much of the floor was her own as she danced around into everyone, once grabbing the couple in front and saying ‘So which of you liked the Fratellis first then?’ Her friend stood stock-still behind her, probably because if she moved she’d have gone down like a felled tree. Her eyes were glazed and she wasn’t doing much. After a failed attempt to enter the moshpit, they retreated to the corner and collapsed on the floor.
I glanced up to see how everyone on the balcony was doing. Everyone was swaying in time, and one person was standing up and having a little jig. There’s not very much in the way of audience interaction, but Jon occasionally smiles at people in the front row. The odd plastic cup is lobbed on stage, though whether a sign of appreciation Glasgow-style or someone hating the set, I can’t tell.
The band are good at rocking their way through the tracks and the audience love it, but there’s something missing. The band almost seem to be on autopilot and while the song’s are great and the crowd are energetic, something doesn’t quite feel right.
There was a brief interval so we popped out for some light and cool air. My friend nudged me and pointed out the Dykeenies stood in a group chatting by the bar. Hopefully they had a rider, either that or the poor bastards had been queuing for the past hour like everyone else. We bumped into a friend as she rushed out the bar. She’d been queuing for half an hour so had missed half the Fratellis and looked a bit harried.
Jon reappeared to sing a solo acoustic version of ‘For The Girl’. The Fratellis got on with their last track, which sounded a lot like T-Rex. After a few seconds I realised it was a dirty glam rock version of Goldfrapp’s ‘Ooh La La,’ which sounded ace.
The show finished early – well, they couldn’t really do a two hour set each - and we got out the car park and were home before 11pm, even with stopping to buy a cheap poster on the way out. I was sad to have missed the Maccabees, pleased to have heard the Dykeenies, and was buzzing after the headliners. Mon the Fratellis!
http://www.nme.com
http://www.thedykeenies.com
http://www.thefratellis.com
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KAISER CHIEFS / THE PIGEON DETECTIVES
@ Hof Ter Lo, Antwerp, 10th November 2006
There’s something we have to get straight. Travelling abroad to see a band does NOT count as stalking. Travelling and learning about the world is good. And if you can see some bands while you’re there then that’s just an added bonus.
And that’s why I was stood outside the Hof Ter Lo in Antwerp, shivering slightly and waiting to go in and see the Kaiser Chiefs. There was a large group of us who had made the journey all the way from the UK (or Germany, or Finland) and we were keeping warm by drinking cans of raspberry beer in between cans of cherry beer and other cans of raspberry beer. A few of the girls were very excited because a couple of the Chiefs had been outside to say hi and sign autos a few hours earlier. The door wasn’t properly locked and occasionally someone would fall through it with a crash and a shriek, causing security to frown at us.
At the moment, excitement was building again because the camera crew which had been marching in and out of the venue was walking in our direction. The smiley Belgian reporter (a friend later told us it was Dave Peters, a famous radio presenter) makes a beeline for us, so three of us English girls linked arms and grinned slightly manically.
“Where are you from?” he asks.
“English!” Oh dear. “Are any of you from Leeds?” Helen and Sarah are, and they let loose with a war cry of “LEEEEEDS!”
“I’m from Portsmouth,” I mumble, all too aware that there is a camera lens in our eyes and my hair has chosen to wind itself across my face. “They’re from Leeds, I’m from Portsmouth.”
“LEEEEEDS!”
He asks us why we had come all this way, so we all talk loudly over each other about how we like music and how we like travelling and how it is good to do the two and the Chiefs have a great live reputation. “Are you crazy to come all this way?” Dave asks.
“Nooo…”
We keep our wide grins in place. After a few minutes the Belgian turns back to the camera and begins spouting his finishing link in Dutch. The only intelligible words we pick out are ‘Ricky and Nick’ so the fangirls start elbowing each other and giggling. A few people may have fallen through the door again.
The Kaiser Chiefs’ European tour was exciting for several reasons. Firstly, they usually play festivals and the like abroad but this tour was in venues of around 1,000 people; much smaller than usual. Secondly they would be showcasing a lot of material from their forthcoming second album, the follow-up to ‘Employment’. The odd track had been heard (and bootlegged) in the summer months but a lot more was promised this time round.
By the time doors opened, the polite British queue had turned into a large mass of people (those foreigners… tsch) pressed against the glass, a couple of them yelling “GOING OUT WITH! GOING OUT WITH!” along to the Pigeon Detectives soundcheck. The door was wrenched open and there was a hectic rush straight to the front of the stage, with the poor girl who’d come all the way from Finland bouncing along right on her arse after falling down the steps. I gave her a badge to patch up her broken trousers with, after tripping over the last step and scuffing my big toe painfully.
With our places all saved nicely, it was time to check out the merchandise stall and the new range of t-shirts. The prices all looked extortionate, but they were in euros and I couldn’t be bothered to work out the exact pound sterling equivalent.
The Pigeon Detectives came onstage to tear through a short set, which included the usual suspects ‘Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye’, ‘Romantic Type’, ‘In Your Trap’, ‘I’m Not Sorry’, ‘Can’t Control Myself’ and ‘I’m Always Right’. The crowd started to wake up slightly as the band crashed around on stage and happily sung along with ‘I Found Out’ (think we might have taught them the lyrics to that one outside earlier). The mic lead wrapped itself around one of the cymbals and brought it down which the crowd thought was funny. It felt very strange to be one of only a few people dancing and singing away because the band are barely known in Belgium (they’re still barely known in the UK, let alone mainland Europe) and the crowd was very tame.
The Pigeons had to unplug most of their own equipment, so I amused myself by yelling and waving at them in turn. Most looked scared, but waved back. There were classic tracks put on in the background; a bit of the Beatles, the Clash, Rolling Stones and so on. Plus there was a Mr Man book sat on top of one of the amps. A bit of investigation revealed it was Mr Strong, although I’m not sure what significance this has if any.
The Kaiser Chiefs may have been slightly annoyed to travel all this way only to find the front row occupied by giggling Brits who quite obviously had bootlegged their new songs, but if they were pissed off they didn’t show it. Ricky, Nick, Simon, Whitey and Peanut looked calm and happy to be on stage and they were displaying a chirpy cheekiness not evident in the mega-big gigs.
The set opened with new track ‘Angry Mob’ and the band started laughing when they saw most of the front row already knew the lyrics. The other new tracks they played were ‘Heat Dies Down’, ‘Everything Is Average Nowadays’, and the even newer ‘Ruby’ and ‘Retirement.’
The band have played a lot of festivals this year but haven’t toured for several months. Frankly it showed, as Ricky looked knackered and spent most of the gig stood in front of the mic stand, only tearing around occasionally. At one stage he walked up to the drumkit and rested his head down, while Nick called out to him: “Do you want someone else to sing this one? Do you want us to get Whitey to sing it?” There was little crowd interaction despite being a small venue and no crowd surfing, which was a bit of a disappointment.
The new tracks are sounding catchy and certainly grow on the listener. Everyone was singing along to the ‘Employment’ songs - ‘Everyday I Love You Less and Less’, ‘I Predict A Riot’, ‘Modern Way’ and ‘Caroline Yes’. Again the crowd was tame. Usually during ‘IPAR’ you have several people clawing their way up your back and an elbow in your throat. This time, I had one person bump into me twice and plenty of breathing space. Whether that means the crowd aren’t into it as much or just have more manners, I don’t know. It felt wrong.
It was a short set, finishing dead on an hour, including a two-song encore (‘Retirement’ and an extended ‘Oh My God’). The whole thing is over by about ten, so we hang around chatting then head outside. Nick and Peanut stay around signing autographs while the others walk past with their heads down, flanked by security guards. I smile and say hello, and only Ricky is friendly enough to say hello back. (I put this down to my short dress). He’s looking more awake now than he was all night. The Pigeon Detectives are kindly handing out beer off their rider, then everyone’s off into the night and I’m aware that it’s fucking freezing and blowing a gale.
It was a top effort from the Pigeons considering they were playing to a crowd who’d never heard of them. The Kaisers were entertaining as usual but in places seemed a little unenergetic and worn; despite this, their new tracks are sounding excellent and more UK shows surely beckon. And we got to have a nice little sightseeing holiday around Belgium, which was very entertaining and worth the trip alone. More people should travel abroad for gigs.
http://www.kaiserchiefs.co.uk
http://www.thepigeondetectives.com
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THE FUTUREHEADS / THE MACCABEES / THE ENEMY
@ Portsmouth Pyramids, 3rd December 2006
Decent days, and nights spent dancing
Ah yes, I remember the Futureheads. They were on the NME tour early last year, but seemed to have been left slightly behind after the Killers and Kaiser Chiefs rocketed into the indie stratosphere. Everyone told me their most recent album wasn’t as good as the last, and they were dropped by their record label only the other week. And with tickets available on the door for a mere (!) £15, I wasn’t sure what size crowd would turn up.
I’d never been to the Pyramids before. It’s got a lovely location along the seafront. Or it would be lovely if it hadn’t been about minus seven with strong winds and a road closed off, forcing me and my friend to drive around in panicked circles for a bit.
First onstage were the Enemy. The name sounded vaguely familiar but I wasn’t sure why – MySpace perhaps? Liam, Tom and Andy are a three piece from sunny Coventry. As soon as they began swaggering around the stage, immediately Oasis popped up in my head, and wouldn’t get out. They appeared to be one of those bands which seem good at the time – yeah! Guitars! Rock! – but ultimately were forgettable. Still signed up to their mailing list in case I had missed something special by being stood at the back.
Got ticked off by my friend for leaving my mobile in my bag somewhere so she couldn’t get hold of me (not deliberately, honest). And finally it was time to see the Maccabees. A few people I had spoken to also missed out when they failed to rejoin the rescheduled NME tour last month, so it was a huge round of applause they got when they came onstage. The band are from Brighton, so they’re practically local. Their names are Orlando (vocals), Rupert (bass), Robert (drums), Hugo and Felix (guitars) – possibly the poshest sounding names for a band I’ve heard for a while, although you wouldn’t guess it by looking at them. They turned out to be very enjoyable, with jerked guitars, slightly strangulated and emotional vocals and an intriguing quirkiness about them. The biggest cheer and moshing was reserved for single ‘First Love’, which had managed to sneak into the Top 40 shortly before.
“Did you like the Maccabees?” I said to some people near the bar afterwards. “I thought they were brilliant.”
“Are you going out with one of them?” was the reply. Oh well. Different people, different tastes.
But I was right.
Then it was time to push my way nearer the front for the Futureheads. The Sunderland boys are Ross, Barry, Dave and Jaff, and they’re nearly at the end of their current tour. I have to confess that I don’t actually have ‘News and Tributes.’ In fact, I don’t even have ‘The Futureheads’ and that came out about two years ago. Frankly, I’d forgotten how good they were. They opened with ‘Area', then ripped right through tracks including 'Yes/No', 'The City Is Here For You To Use', 'Worry About It Later', 'A To B', the ever-popular 'Decent Days And Nights', 'Skip To The End', and others. Despite the fact they don't run around the stage as much as some, their powerfully tense and crunching guitars had so much heavy energy the crowd couldn't help but be stirred into excitement.
Come ‘Hounds of Love’, and it's time for audience participation. Jaff’s side cheered the loudest. (Ross later complained that Jaff always wins because he can point and wave to encourage everyone, whereas poor Ross can’t. Let’s start a campaign to Make Ross Win). A man stood right behind me in the mosh pit and put his hands on my waist, but before I started getting any wanton ideas it transpired he just wanted to fling me out the way so he could rush into someone else. A young teen was lifted up to crowdsurf and was instantly dropped on his head. He nodded he was fine, and tried again.
“Out of my way! This man has no shoes!” shouted one guy, trying to launch his friend above everyone’s heads. The crowd was crazy and loving it, and were far more into the show than I had expected they would be. As we were the best crowd on the tour, we were lucky to get a few extra songs and it was a nice long set. The show finished with 'Return Of The Berserker', 'Carnival Kids' and crowd favourite ‘Picture of Dorian Gray.’ The front few rows were dripping with sweat and the bouncers amused themselves by spraying cold water at people, although far too many ladies got soaking wet tops.
I waited around at the end and got the band to sign a ‘Hounds of Love’ 7” for my sister’s Christmas present (which sounds generous but it wasn’t. It was hers anyway. I just stole it off her shelf and rewrapped it). The band thought the crowd was brilliant and I'm inclined to agree - it's been a while since I saw a mosh pit quite so buzzing, and I honestly hadn't been expecting to find one here. But I'm glad I did, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the band's next move will be.
http://www.thefutureheads.com
http://www.themaccabees.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/theenemycoventry
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv/
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
THE LONG BLONDES
@ Southampton Joiners, 27th October 2006
I love everything that comes out of the supposedly-labelled ‘New Yorkshire’ scene. The Long Blondes are one of the most exciting bands, with their ‘glamour punk’ melodies making tidal waves in the indie underground and swamping some of the plainer rock acts of the moment.
The band is made up of the stylish Kate Jackson on vocals, Emma Chaplin on guitar, keyboards and backing vocals, Reenie Hollis on bass and backing vocals, Dorian Cox on lead guitar and vocals and the wonderfully named Screech Louder on drums. Unfortunately they suffer from frequent comparison to Pulp, which is something they are proud of but which dogs (are) every (where) single review about them. Oh, done it again. It’s easy to see why though, with the cheerful keyboards, quirky key changes and seriously cool singer.
There’s a bit of a delay before they come onstage, which is good for us because we’ve just come from a friend’s birthday party and hadn’t arrived much before 10pm. Kate strides on in a slinky, figure-hugging striped dress. It’s easy to see why she’s as well known for making the NME Cool List as the band are for their songs.
Kate sneers her way through songs, dancing away and smiling at the audience, quickly switching between friend of the fans and untouchable rock chick. She has an amazing presence and the crowd love it. The setlist includes ‘Weekend Without Makeup’, ‘Appropriation (By Any Other Name)’, ‘You Could Have Both’, ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ and it ends with a happy sing-a-long to ‘Separated By Motorways.’
My friend turns to me halfway through. “I’ve fallen in love,” he says dreamily while gazing at Kate. He’s gay. There’s a girl in the crowd called Rachel and it’s her birthday, so the band quickly adapt the lyrics of new single ‘Once And Never Again’ to “18, you’re only 18 for God’s sake, oh you don’t need a boyfriend.”
“Come back next year and we’ll sing the proper one at you,” says Kate. The birthday girl and her friends are pretty chuffed, judging from the whoops I can hear coming from the front.
There’s a stage invasion at the end. Instead of people crowdsurfing into the drum kit and being pushed offstage, everyone is stood with arms round one another and trying to sing into the microphone. Kate manages the great facial expression of having bewildered, nervous fun. It’s been a great show. The tracks are all catchy and danceable. My friend did complain that some sounded the same, but as he hadn’t heard much of their songs he may just not be used to the style.
My sister comes up to me and gives me a Long Blondes sticker which the man on the merchandise stall gave her for having good hair. She said it was free, but I’m not so sure seeing as I had to give her a tenner for a t-shirt in the first place. The Long Blondes are good, spikey, classy pop fun and I’m sure their album will get the recognition it deserves.
http://www.thelongblondes.co.uk
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02 NME ROCK AND ROLL RIOT TOUR
The Fratellis / The Dykeenies
Portsmouth Guildhall, 8th November 2006
The NME Tour stops off in Portsmouth. Or rather, half of it does
About time. This gig was meant to take place about a month earlier but a change of venue meant a change of date, and of acts.
The Horrors couldn’t make the rescheduled date because they’re causing chaos in the States while the Maccabees are rocking up Leeds. On second thoughts, perhaps we should have been refunded half the ticket price to make up for the fact that half the advertised bands weren’t there. No-one seemed to be complaining though, probably because everyone only wanted to see the Fratellis.
We arrived just before the Dykeenies took the stage. This lot are from sunny Glasgow and are Brian (vocals/synths), Alan and Steven (guitar), Andrew (bass), and John (drums).They were dressed a bit nu-rave, as I’m sure the NME would put it. I wasn’t familiar with any of their tracks, although I did know the name from reading the magazine. The NME had described them as having ‘a natural knack for constructing snappy pop songs,’ and they weren’t wrong. Every song seemed full of excitement, catchiness and synths.
“They’re the British Killers,” my friend says, quite rightly.“Hello Portsmouth!” shouts Brian. “Looking forward to the Fratellis?” Roar. “Can you understand our accents?” Another roar.
We decided to nip out for a quick lemonade as I’d been out all day and was really thirsty. The band hadn’t been playing for long so we thought it would be fine to disappear for a quick drink. We hadn’t banked on the fact that the Guildhall bar is crap. There was a queue about four people deep and twenty across. Around ten minutes later and the queue was still four people deep and twenty across. Another five minutes and we were getting hot and annoyed. A bit of exploring around the venue and we discovered all the vending machines were switched off. Great. We arrived back in to see the end of the Dykeenies as they roused everyone in readiness for the headliners. They were an excellent sounding band that I’ll definitely have to check out.
A few ripples of ‘Chelsea Dagger’ travelled around the venue as people get worked up about the Fratellis. The band haven’t been playing together for long. Jon, Barry and Mince (according to their website, Mince was a (lovable) stoner, Barry was a car thief and Jon was just a Jon) formed in spring 2005 and soon caught the attention of everyone with their raucous tunes. The first track of theirs I’d heard was ‘Cigarello’ which I thought would be a cracker live; however friends had warned me they had a habit of sounding a bit like a redneck hoedown, what with all the whoops and the country-style chords.
The Fratellis stepped on stage with a wave and a smile. Mince was proudly showing off his Scottishness by wearing a vest and drinking from a two-litre bottle of Irn-Bru onstage from behind his drums. Jon waved at a few people in the front row, then the band kicked into ‘Creepin’ Up The Backstairs’ and everyone went nuts. Other songs they played were ‘Doginabag’, ‘Flathead’, ‘Ole Black and Blue Eyes’, ‘Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night’, ‘Cigarello’, ‘Vince The Loveable Stoner’ (cue audience ‘Ah-ha’), all familiar to people with the album (as it seemed everyone in here owned) or with access to the Budhill Singles Club. Unlike many of the other shows on this tour, the whole show wasn’t taken up with the crowd singing the ‘Chelsea Dagger’ riff – yes, there was a bit of it here and there, but not as much as people say in there was in other shows.I was a bit tired after my day so I hadn’t stood too close to the front.
Halfway through I felt a bit disappointed that I wasn’t closer, with crowdsurfers and the odd beer hurling through the air and the crowd rising with their hands up in sheer joy. I was also getting fed up of the woman next to me. She looked about 45 and had clearly drunk too much. Much of the floor was her own as she danced around into everyone, once grabbing the couple in front and saying ‘So which of you liked the Fratellis first then?’ Her friend stood stock-still behind her, probably because if she moved she’d have gone down like a felled tree. Her eyes were glazed and she wasn’t doing much. After a failed attempt to enter the moshpit, they retreated to the corner and collapsed on the floor.
I glanced up to see how everyone on the balcony was doing. Everyone was swaying in time, and one person was standing up and having a little jig. There’s not very much in the way of audience interaction, but Jon occasionally smiles at people in the front row. The odd plastic cup is lobbed on stage, though whether a sign of appreciation Glasgow-style or someone hating the set, I can’t tell.
The band are good at rocking their way through the tracks and the audience love it, but there’s something missing. The band almost seem to be on autopilot and while the song’s are great and the crowd are energetic, something doesn’t quite feel right.
There was a brief interval so we popped out for some light and cool air. My friend nudged me and pointed out the Dykeenies stood in a group chatting by the bar. Hopefully they had a rider, either that or the poor bastards had been queuing for the past hour like everyone else. We bumped into a friend as she rushed out the bar. She’d been queuing for half an hour so had missed half the Fratellis and looked a bit harried.
Jon reappeared to sing a solo acoustic version of ‘For The Girl’. The Fratellis got on with their last track, which sounded a lot like T-Rex. After a few seconds I realised it was a dirty glam rock version of Goldfrapp’s ‘Ooh La La,’ which sounded ace.
The show finished early – well, they couldn’t really do a two hour set each - and we got out the car park and were home before 11pm, even with stopping to buy a cheap poster on the way out. I was sad to have missed the Maccabees, pleased to have heard the Dykeenies, and was buzzing after the headliners. Mon the Fratellis!
http://www.nme.com
http://www.thedykeenies.com
http://www.thefratellis.com
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KAISER CHIEFS / THE PIGEON DETECTIVES
@ Hof Ter Lo, Antwerp, 10th November 2006
There’s something we have to get straight. Travelling abroad to see a band does NOT count as stalking. Travelling and learning about the world is good. And if you can see some bands while you’re there then that’s just an added bonus.
And that’s why I was stood outside the Hof Ter Lo in Antwerp, shivering slightly and waiting to go in and see the Kaiser Chiefs. There was a large group of us who had made the journey all the way from the UK (or Germany, or Finland) and we were keeping warm by drinking cans of raspberry beer in between cans of cherry beer and other cans of raspberry beer. A few of the girls were very excited because a couple of the Chiefs had been outside to say hi and sign autos a few hours earlier. The door wasn’t properly locked and occasionally someone would fall through it with a crash and a shriek, causing security to frown at us.
At the moment, excitement was building again because the camera crew which had been marching in and out of the venue was walking in our direction. The smiley Belgian reporter (a friend later told us it was Dave Peters, a famous radio presenter) makes a beeline for us, so three of us English girls linked arms and grinned slightly manically.
“Where are you from?” he asks.
“English!” Oh dear. “Are any of you from Leeds?” Helen and Sarah are, and they let loose with a war cry of “LEEEEEDS!”
“I’m from Portsmouth,” I mumble, all too aware that there is a camera lens in our eyes and my hair has chosen to wind itself across my face. “They’re from Leeds, I’m from Portsmouth.”
“LEEEEEDS!”
He asks us why we had come all this way, so we all talk loudly over each other about how we like music and how we like travelling and how it is good to do the two and the Chiefs have a great live reputation. “Are you crazy to come all this way?” Dave asks.
“Nooo…”
We keep our wide grins in place. After a few minutes the Belgian turns back to the camera and begins spouting his finishing link in Dutch. The only intelligible words we pick out are ‘Ricky and Nick’ so the fangirls start elbowing each other and giggling. A few people may have fallen through the door again.
The Kaiser Chiefs’ European tour was exciting for several reasons. Firstly, they usually play festivals and the like abroad but this tour was in venues of around 1,000 people; much smaller than usual. Secondly they would be showcasing a lot of material from their forthcoming second album, the follow-up to ‘Employment’. The odd track had been heard (and bootlegged) in the summer months but a lot more was promised this time round.
By the time doors opened, the polite British queue had turned into a large mass of people (those foreigners… tsch) pressed against the glass, a couple of them yelling “GOING OUT WITH! GOING OUT WITH!” along to the Pigeon Detectives soundcheck. The door was wrenched open and there was a hectic rush straight to the front of the stage, with the poor girl who’d come all the way from Finland bouncing along right on her arse after falling down the steps. I gave her a badge to patch up her broken trousers with, after tripping over the last step and scuffing my big toe painfully.
With our places all saved nicely, it was time to check out the merchandise stall and the new range of t-shirts. The prices all looked extortionate, but they were in euros and I couldn’t be bothered to work out the exact pound sterling equivalent.
The Pigeon Detectives came onstage to tear through a short set, which included the usual suspects ‘Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye’, ‘Romantic Type’, ‘In Your Trap’, ‘I’m Not Sorry’, ‘Can’t Control Myself’ and ‘I’m Always Right’. The crowd started to wake up slightly as the band crashed around on stage and happily sung along with ‘I Found Out’ (think we might have taught them the lyrics to that one outside earlier). The mic lead wrapped itself around one of the cymbals and brought it down which the crowd thought was funny. It felt very strange to be one of only a few people dancing and singing away because the band are barely known in Belgium (they’re still barely known in the UK, let alone mainland Europe) and the crowd was very tame.
The Pigeons had to unplug most of their own equipment, so I amused myself by yelling and waving at them in turn. Most looked scared, but waved back. There were classic tracks put on in the background; a bit of the Beatles, the Clash, Rolling Stones and so on. Plus there was a Mr Man book sat on top of one of the amps. A bit of investigation revealed it was Mr Strong, although I’m not sure what significance this has if any.
The Kaiser Chiefs may have been slightly annoyed to travel all this way only to find the front row occupied by giggling Brits who quite obviously had bootlegged their new songs, but if they were pissed off they didn’t show it. Ricky, Nick, Simon, Whitey and Peanut looked calm and happy to be on stage and they were displaying a chirpy cheekiness not evident in the mega-big gigs.
The set opened with new track ‘Angry Mob’ and the band started laughing when they saw most of the front row already knew the lyrics. The other new tracks they played were ‘Heat Dies Down’, ‘Everything Is Average Nowadays’, and the even newer ‘Ruby’ and ‘Retirement.’
The band have played a lot of festivals this year but haven’t toured for several months. Frankly it showed, as Ricky looked knackered and spent most of the gig stood in front of the mic stand, only tearing around occasionally. At one stage he walked up to the drumkit and rested his head down, while Nick called out to him: “Do you want someone else to sing this one? Do you want us to get Whitey to sing it?” There was little crowd interaction despite being a small venue and no crowd surfing, which was a bit of a disappointment.
The new tracks are sounding catchy and certainly grow on the listener. Everyone was singing along to the ‘Employment’ songs - ‘Everyday I Love You Less and Less’, ‘I Predict A Riot’, ‘Modern Way’ and ‘Caroline Yes’. Again the crowd was tame. Usually during ‘IPAR’ you have several people clawing their way up your back and an elbow in your throat. This time, I had one person bump into me twice and plenty of breathing space. Whether that means the crowd aren’t into it as much or just have more manners, I don’t know. It felt wrong.
It was a short set, finishing dead on an hour, including a two-song encore (‘Retirement’ and an extended ‘Oh My God’). The whole thing is over by about ten, so we hang around chatting then head outside. Nick and Peanut stay around signing autographs while the others walk past with their heads down, flanked by security guards. I smile and say hello, and only Ricky is friendly enough to say hello back. (I put this down to my short dress). He’s looking more awake now than he was all night. The Pigeon Detectives are kindly handing out beer off their rider, then everyone’s off into the night and I’m aware that it’s fucking freezing and blowing a gale.
It was a top effort from the Pigeons considering they were playing to a crowd who’d never heard of them. The Kaisers were entertaining as usual but in places seemed a little unenergetic and worn; despite this, their new tracks are sounding excellent and more UK shows surely beckon. And we got to have a nice little sightseeing holiday around Belgium, which was very entertaining and worth the trip alone. More people should travel abroad for gigs.
http://www.kaiserchiefs.co.uk
http://www.thepigeondetectives.com
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THE FUTUREHEADS / THE MACCABEES / THE ENEMY
@ Portsmouth Pyramids, 3rd December 2006
Decent days, and nights spent dancing
Ah yes, I remember the Futureheads. They were on the NME tour early last year, but seemed to have been left slightly behind after the Killers and Kaiser Chiefs rocketed into the indie stratosphere. Everyone told me their most recent album wasn’t as good as the last, and they were dropped by their record label only the other week. And with tickets available on the door for a mere (!) £15, I wasn’t sure what size crowd would turn up.
I’d never been to the Pyramids before. It’s got a lovely location along the seafront. Or it would be lovely if it hadn’t been about minus seven with strong winds and a road closed off, forcing me and my friend to drive around in panicked circles for a bit.
First onstage were the Enemy. The name sounded vaguely familiar but I wasn’t sure why – MySpace perhaps? Liam, Tom and Andy are a three piece from sunny Coventry. As soon as they began swaggering around the stage, immediately Oasis popped up in my head, and wouldn’t get out. They appeared to be one of those bands which seem good at the time – yeah! Guitars! Rock! – but ultimately were forgettable. Still signed up to their mailing list in case I had missed something special by being stood at the back.
Got ticked off by my friend for leaving my mobile in my bag somewhere so she couldn’t get hold of me (not deliberately, honest). And finally it was time to see the Maccabees. A few people I had spoken to also missed out when they failed to rejoin the rescheduled NME tour last month, so it was a huge round of applause they got when they came onstage. The band are from Brighton, so they’re practically local. Their names are Orlando (vocals), Rupert (bass), Robert (drums), Hugo and Felix (guitars) – possibly the poshest sounding names for a band I’ve heard for a while, although you wouldn’t guess it by looking at them. They turned out to be very enjoyable, with jerked guitars, slightly strangulated and emotional vocals and an intriguing quirkiness about them. The biggest cheer and moshing was reserved for single ‘First Love’, which had managed to sneak into the Top 40 shortly before.
“Did you like the Maccabees?” I said to some people near the bar afterwards. “I thought they were brilliant.”
“Are you going out with one of them?” was the reply. Oh well. Different people, different tastes.
But I was right.
Then it was time to push my way nearer the front for the Futureheads. The Sunderland boys are Ross, Barry, Dave and Jaff, and they’re nearly at the end of their current tour. I have to confess that I don’t actually have ‘News and Tributes.’ In fact, I don’t even have ‘The Futureheads’ and that came out about two years ago. Frankly, I’d forgotten how good they were. They opened with ‘Area', then ripped right through tracks including 'Yes/No', 'The City Is Here For You To Use', 'Worry About It Later', 'A To B', the ever-popular 'Decent Days And Nights', 'Skip To The End', and others. Despite the fact they don't run around the stage as much as some, their powerfully tense and crunching guitars had so much heavy energy the crowd couldn't help but be stirred into excitement.
Come ‘Hounds of Love’, and it's time for audience participation. Jaff’s side cheered the loudest. (Ross later complained that Jaff always wins because he can point and wave to encourage everyone, whereas poor Ross can’t. Let’s start a campaign to Make Ross Win). A man stood right behind me in the mosh pit and put his hands on my waist, but before I started getting any wanton ideas it transpired he just wanted to fling me out the way so he could rush into someone else. A young teen was lifted up to crowdsurf and was instantly dropped on his head. He nodded he was fine, and tried again.
“Out of my way! This man has no shoes!” shouted one guy, trying to launch his friend above everyone’s heads. The crowd was crazy and loving it, and were far more into the show than I had expected they would be. As we were the best crowd on the tour, we were lucky to get a few extra songs and it was a nice long set. The show finished with 'Return Of The Berserker', 'Carnival Kids' and crowd favourite ‘Picture of Dorian Gray.’ The front few rows were dripping with sweat and the bouncers amused themselves by spraying cold water at people, although far too many ladies got soaking wet tops.
I waited around at the end and got the band to sign a ‘Hounds of Love’ 7” for my sister’s Christmas present (which sounds generous but it wasn’t. It was hers anyway. I just stole it off her shelf and rewrapped it). The band thought the crowd was brilliant and I'm inclined to agree - it's been a while since I saw a mosh pit quite so buzzing, and I honestly hadn't been expecting to find one here. But I'm glad I did, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the band's next move will be.
http://www.thefutureheads.com
http://www.themaccabees.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/theenemycoventry
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