Your New Favorite New Band: The Pigeon Detectives

by Patrick Gary

The Buzzcocks must be awfully proud these days. They really invented a sound that seems to have been as durable and influential as could be imagined. Part punk, part pop, stripped down to 2-3 minutes per song, edgy but not harsh... they took the Sex Pistols and de-fanged the sound without emasculating it. The sound has held on in one form or another now for about thirty years.

The Pigeon Detectives are one of the most recent bands to take on the mantle of that sound and trying to conquer the world. They already made the scene in the U. K. with their version of the post-punk revival recently being championed by The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, The Killers and The Kaiser Chiefs. Founded in 2002 by five friends from Leeds, they've made it to #1 on the U. K. indie charts with their single "I Found Out" and toured on both sides of the Atlantic. They make boisterous, angular dance music, and do it quite well.

The upside is that, if you're already into that sound then you may have just found your favorite new band. This short EP is very strong. The songs have a lot of swagger and energy to them.

The caveat is that they mostly do an excellent job of sounding like other bands that were popular earlier this decade. Rather than forging their own sound they seem to have decided to attract as many of that sounds followers as they can by producing very good examples of post punk. There's never anything wrong with working to perfect a sound, but this is not a band for the adventurous listener.

I can safely recommend this to anyone who's been a fan of pop punk or post punk dance music from this decade. Also fans of the original British punk bands from the 1970s will probably enjoy checking these guys out. It isn't anything you haven't heard before, but it's a good sound nonetheless, and solid.