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The PIGEON DETECTIVES INTERVIEW

On Sunday 27 May 2007, the Pigeon Detectives played the second of two nights at Leeds Town Hall. I caught up with the band shortly before they took to the stage. Whilst I didn’t get to speak to lead singer Matt Bowman, I nevertheless had a lively conversation with the rest of the band: Oliver Main (Lead Guitar), Ryan Wilson (Guitar), Dave Best (Bass) and Jimmi Naylor (Drums).

This is your second night in a row playing the Leeds Town Hall. What was it like last night, because you haven’t played here before?

Oliver: No we haven’t. It were good. I think it were one of the best gigs we’ve played on the tour actually, just from our point of view. It’s kind of a strange place to play, the Town Hall – we’re used to playing dingy, horrible scum venues that stink of beer of piss, so to play an actual nice venue you can’t smoke inside and things like that, it made quite a change, really. I enjoyed it myself.

Ryan: It’s probably the biggest room venue-wise I’ve played, like with the really tall fancy room and everything. We’ve played the Astoria in London recently, but that’s like a cesspit, it’s disgusting and needs doing, but you get an ace atmosphere in there because it’s quite dark and dingy, but this is quite bright and really good décor. So I think it’s a bit different, but we had a really good gig, totally different to anything we’ve done before.

Your last single, Romantic Type went Top 20, and the follow-up I’m Not Sorry got to Number 12. How do you feel about that?

Jimmi: We kind of thought it would get to Number 12, so it’s kind of not Top 10 but it’s a good step up from the last one.

Ryan: We secretly hoped it would get Top 10, but it didn’t!

Jimmi: The thing is, we always hope we do better because we always aim for being the best.

Ryan: It still is a really good tune and there’s not that many guitar bands around what can actually get Top 20 – there’s only probably ten guitar bands like us what can do it, and there’s loads trying, so it’s still a massive achievement and we’re all really happy, but I think secretly we’d have hoped to at least have crept inside the Top 10! We’ve got our album out next week, and hopefully a lot of people will buy that as well.

The album, Wait For Me, has got some very positive reviews, so you must be very hopeful about that!

Dave: We’re really happy with it. When we first went to record it, it were quite daunting because we were known as a live band and not so much as a recording band, so it were quite daunting going into it and we really wanted to capture both the songs and the live energy. I think we did that on the album and it’s got some really good reviews – I don’t think I’ve read one bad review of it, so everybody else likes it so we’re happy.

Ryan: Even the quite intelligent magazines have given us some really good reviews – there are some that stand by their opinions, but there are other’s where if the band’s good and it makes good music, they’ll say that.

Jimmi: I think we’ve had some journalists in the past who’ve been like quite lazy journalists and said we’re quite an unintelligent band, so it’s quite ironic that The Times, The Guardian, Mojo Magazine, like respected journalists, have really praised it and said it harks back to bands like the Buzzcocks or the Shangri-Las.

That’s definitely something I picked up – it’s sort of carrying on in that tradition of angsty teen pop.

Jimmi: We’ve just been compared to random bands just because we’ve been associated, or just they’re out recently, like Kaiser Chiefs, and we don’t honestly sound anything like that.

Going back to what you said about people saying your lyrics are unintelligent, there’s one song, Can’t Control Myself, which deals with the subject of domestic violence. How did that come about?

Oliver: I wrote the song originally and it was kind of a boy-girl type song, and I played it to everyone and Matt [Bowman] misheard what I’d sung and thought that I’d sung “You said I’d make you walk into a door” or something like that, so the rest of the lyrics he wrote, and he thought the song was about that in the first place, which it wasn’t. We didn’t even realise until we were in the recording studio and we were listening to him singing the vocals that he was singing about kicking shit out of birds.

Ryan: It’s obviously accidental and we don’t condone anything like that!

Oliver: The original idea of the song wasn’t that and then he changed it.

Jimmi: I think a lot of the writing on the album is kind of observational, as opposed to biographical. I think it’s more like kind of a comment on today’s culture, rather than “we beat birds up and tell them to take their clothes off when we meet them”, that sort of thing.

The video for I’m Not Sorry seems to feature the band in some sort of post-industrial nightmare beating the hell out of a Ford Fiesta. What was behind that idea?

Dave: We just wanted to beat up a car! It’s Matt’s girlfriend’s old car!

Jimmi: It were an upbeat song and there were a lot going on, and we just thought it’d be fun more than anything – we didn’t think about it too much, it was a suggestion of the producer.

Ryan: We thought that’d be quite interesting, we could have a bit of fun. There wasn’t a particular kind of storyline to it as such.

Jimmi: To begin with, we came up with a lot of narrative-led videos, like we were in the courtroom, and stuff like that; but we thought we didn’t really want to go down a storytelling route with a video, because it can look really cheesy, so we just came up with loads more ideas and we got fed up!

And your last video seemed to be a pastiche of 70s pop music programmes, especially German ones like Musik Laden, so what was the origin was behind that idea?

Oliver: Again, that were the director. I mean, we’re not too creative on the video front! We just kind of say “give us some ideas and we’ll pick which one we like”. He just showed us this T-Rex video, I think it were from some East German TV show and that were really cool, and then he kind of put the little storyline to that as well – but even that were kind of 1970s-themed, like That 70s Show and that kind of stuff. So it’s more the director than us. We just say yes or no!

So you bend to their will basically!!

Oliver: They bend to our will as we have opinions, but no ideas!!

Ryan: We really drove the director up the wall for I’m Not Sorry, because he had a few ideas and they were all quite dated and cheesy.

Oliver: We’d make videos ourselves if we could get ideas!!

You mentioned Kaiser Chiefs earlier and they’ve been vocally supportive of you. How important has that support been, and the support of the local scene in general?

Oliver: We’ll we’d kind of already built a little bit of a fanbase locally before the Kaisers ever met us. It were Nick [Hodgson, the drummer in Kaiser Chiefs] that had heard about us and we played a venue in Leeds called Joseph’s Well and he’d apparently heard a little bit about us, and he came down to watch us and he was really, really impressed, and it was really nice of him and the Kaiser Chiefs to then big us up in the press and take us on tour. Obviously playing with them in front of a load of people has done us the world of good, you know we really appreciate the help. A few press things have said that if it wasn’t for the Kaiser Chiefs we wouldn’t have done anything, which is strictly not true. It’s certainly helped us, but we’d already got a record deal with Dance To The Radio, and then when we had a little bit of hype in Leeds, that’s when Nick decided to come down and watch. So obviously they’ve helped us a lot, but they’ve not created the Pigeon Detectives.

Because you’ve been around since – is it 2002 or something?

Oliver: I think our first gig were 2002?

Jimmi: No, it wasn’t, I think it was 2003 or 2004.

Oliver: We were just playing in each other’s bedrooms, but the first gig were 2004, but we kind of decided to pick up guitars and whatever in 2002. We messed around for a few years before we even decided to do a gig.

Ryan: The thing with the Kaiser Chiefs is that they thought we were a good band so they wanted people to hear us, just as the Ordinary Boys did the same thing for them and got them supporting on the tour. So if we get to the same status, we’ll probably do it for someone else.

Oliver: It’s what we’ve tried to do on this tour. We got Air Traffic, which was kind of a label-agreed thing, but the bands who’ve been on first in every city were people that we like, people that we get along with and want them to play for more people than the would do usually – so we’re trying to do that on a smaller scale and we will continue to do it if we like bands.

The next dates are in Europe.

Oliver: We’re doing a few in-stores to promote the album, and then we’re going to Germany and doing a little tour of Holland. Then we’re going to New York after that and then kind of skive about and then do the festivals.

How do you feel about doing the major festivals this year – are you excited, nervous?

Jimmi: It’s more that it’s a really good laugh doing festivals. In our experience of the couple of ones we’ve done it’s been a really good day, just playing a good gig in front of a few thousand people or whatever, and generally just getting drunk and meeting new people!

Ryan: I think we’re kind of more excited – we don’t get nervous. We might get nervous about ten minutes before we go on stage, but I think we’re looking forward to it more than anything. It’s a good day out – you’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s tents, plenty of beer, lots of people around you can have a laugh with, it’s a really good day out. Like, all bands love festivals.

Oliver: I think one of the best things about festivals is that the downfall of being in a band is that you don’t get to see other bands, because everyone tours at the same time, so at festivals you can catch all the bands you’ve been trying to catch.

You’ve obviously known each other for quite a long time. Do you see yourselves still as friends first, and then a band? If the band split up, would you still see each other as friends?

Ryan: Yeah, it depends how the band split up, but if say our record label said “we’re bored with you now, you’re not playing any gigs ever, go and get a nine-to-five job”, we’d still be best mates and probably try to start another band. But we’re are friends first definitely.

One final question: If your house was on fire, what would be the one thing you’d save, apart from each other and your leather jackets?!

Jimmi: My phone – it’d be really annoying if I lost it.

Oliver: I bought a new acoustic guitar, so that!

Ryan: I’ve just bought a new plasma TV and it cost me quite a bit of money, so I think I’d run out with that!

Dave: I’d probably save me dogs, because they’re too fat to get up and run!!

Well thank you very much for your time, and I’m sure you’ll all be “on fire” this evening! [collective laughs and groans]

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