Life must be hard for The Pigeon Detectives. Having formed back in the mists of the 2004, their fledgling (sorry) career was one hotly tipped for superstardom. Championed by the great and the good, (otherwise known as Radio 1 alumni Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq), the band’s early performances on the festival circuit saw them heavily touted to become a headline act, their appearance on the NME stage at the Reading and Leeds festival of 2006 seeing them rather succinctly tagged as ‘the band most likely to leap to the main stage in 2007’. However, 2007 came and went, finding the Yorkshire quintet no closer to realising their oft mooted prophecy of definitive mainstream success.
Fast forward to 2013, and the story of The Pigeon Detectives is now one of hard graft, their gilded past consigned to memory. On the verge of a European tour (their gig at Coalition is their penultimate on British soil), the band are presently in the throws of a heavy promotional push, with their most recent studio album, “We Met At Sea”, having been released at the end of April.
So what went wrong for the ornithologically curious indie rockers? Well, maybe in this instance, the clue is in the genre. When The Pigeon Detectives were just starting out, Britain was riding high on a wave of guitar based appreciation, the music charts full of more Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand’s than you could shake an errant drum stick at. But while such notable contemporaries have moved on to bigger and better things (or at any rate, dating Alexia Chung) the pigeon fanciers from oop North’s failure to trouble the top 40 meant a prompt disappearance from the broader public consciousness.
In cases such as these, the choices are simple: get on the touring circuit or go back to the day job. The band chose the former option and as such, following those heady days of the mid-noughties, can be found anywhere from Hull to Hamburg, diligently plugging away with live performance after live performance. Has it done them any good? Well, with a new album out and an extensive tour underway, they are a good example of a ‘working’ band. But for an act that the NME once reckoned would ‘outlast the indie boom years that spawned them’, now’s the time to prove themselves on a bigger stage.
Starting at7pm, £12.50 in advance
For more information and tickets, visit thepigeondetectives.com
Follow them on Facebook at facebook.com/thepigeondetectives
Words Ed Kirby
