It must be hard being in a band with what’s nothing short of a hysterically bad name. Seriously, The Pigeon Detectives is just awful, but that fact’s not news to anyone, least of all to the band themselves. The rumours fly that they’re named after a pigeon that lives in vocalist Matt Bowman’s garden who writes all the lyrics. Also that they’re named after a 70′s French cartoon or that an Australian named Steve gave them them name at Leeds Festival (drunkenly, we should suppose) .
The reason I say that it must be hard, is that when you’re a British indie pop band nobody expects you to last very long, even more so now that you’ve got a complete piss-take of a name. The bad thing for the Detectives is that they’ve been around now for a solid 7 years and they’re actually pretty good and getting better; they’re kind of stuck under this funny moniker no matter the good work they do. I guess it keeps them humble.
The new album from them, Up, Guards And At ‘Em!, made it out the gate last year and to give it a live airing to the rest of Europe, the lads are touring and making it here to Berlin for a show at the old Magnet, supports to be announced.
Don’t be too hard on them, everybody makes mistakes when they’re young.