Salient

The Pigeon Detectives - Wait For Me

By Tom Baragwanath | 3 Sep, 2007

Christ, another hackneyed English “Indie rock” band.

Like the Arctic Monkeys and the Kaiser Chiefs before them, the Pigeon Detectives spew forth an average blend of distracting English drawling, flat guitar riffs, rudimentary drumming, and banal lyrical themes. Their debut offering, Wait For Me, is 12 tracks of totally forgettable stop-start rock bollocks. Unless you’re after music that shuns subtlety and taste in favour of volume and accessibility, or you yearn for a decent headache, don’t give this album any of your time.

These Leeds lads have essentially taken the Strokes, Oasis and the Clash, thrown out all of the interesting bits and cranked the volume to ear-bleeding levels. Minus the English accents, every one of these tracks sound like the bastard offspring of a Room On Fire b-side reject and a bloody Fall Out Boy single.

Right from opening number ‘Romantic Type’, the boredom sets in.

Pounding drums give way to bloated guitars and spurting vocals. And then, guess what? A shouting chorus! Then, more of the same! This formulaic approach only becomes more apparent with the album’s progression. By the time the last few tracks roll around, you’ll start to wonder whether you accidentally bought a single and left it on repeat for half an hour.

However, the worst thing about this album is not the derivative guitar riffs, or the inanely bland drumming, or the spastic group yell choruses. It’s the lyrics. How on earth could front man Matthew Bowman have been naïve enough to pen such terrible lines as “You know I love you, take off your clothes” (‘You Know I Love You’) and “I’m so confused I don’t know what to do” (‘Stop Or Go’)? Perhaps he thought that with the right kind of leather jacket, nobody would notice.

The world should be insulted by this album. Insulted that a band like this thinks they can release such unrelentingly boring drivel and expect us to enjoy it. The scariest thing is that the album reached #3 in the U.K. charts, and has been described by NME as “Indie-pop perfection”. What’s going on?