Review: The Pigeon Detectives – Rescue Rooms – 7 May 2013

The Pigeon Detectives, an indie rock band who look way too young for their historic success, returned to Nottingham this week, albeit to a slightly smaller crowd than their previous visit to Rock City.  However the reception they got from Rescue Rooms could easily have been that of a much larger audience.  This may be due to the crowd being bored with the warm up acts; there was definitely not much support for the support, Jacks Attic and Must.  In fact during Must the most entertaining thing was seeing Pigeon Detectives frontman Matt Bowman, wandering around the balcony with a can in his hand, clearly desperate for someone to recognise him, bumping into people and pretending to wreck the merchandise stand.  He only stopped when one young lad, finally recognising him, took his picture; Matt then seemed reasonably satisfied and wandered off back stage!

However you cannot mock Matt’s stage presence, oozing this electric contagious energy he got the crowd going the moment he stepped on stage.  Although I’m using the word “stepped” almost metaphorically there, as a movement that calm does not seem to be in Matt’s performance repertoire.  He was a stark contrast to the rest of the band, who gave a polished performance but had an air of indifference, the juxtaposition worked amazingly to emphasise Matt’s incredible old school rebellious rock air and charismatic confident control of the crowd, not that it needed emphasising mind.

By the second song, “I found Out”, the mosh pit was in full swing and the audience was singing along to the chorus.  After this he seemed obsessed with getting people wet; stopping every couple of songs to squirt water into the crowd and throw bottles in, this is either experience from playing so many gigs and wanting to look after his fans or some kind of weird fetish.  Although he did make it clear that he was not sponsored by a spring water company!

His ego was obvious, although he felt the need to point it out by telling the crowd off for not looking at him enough just prior to an epic stage dive that revealed his bright pink pants!  It was only by the end of the 7^th song did he show signs of flagging, but this was short lived and his spring like feet burst straight back into action.   Although at one point, you caught a little glimpse that this defiant enigmatic performance, was just that, an act; when he angrily muttered “Can we have mic’s working as a bare minimum?” when there was a slight technical hitch – diva!

However, he did proudly thank the crowd admitting that he was pleased that their new songs got a good reception, (their new album We Met at Sea is out now).    What was most impressive was that he managed to get an English crowd to move sway their arms in time, at one point he even tried to orchestrate for Nottingham to be the tallest crowd demanding that people get on each other’s shoulders, which actually worked quite well.

Each of the 16 songs went down as well as the one before, so much so that halfway through he said “My next question was going to be are you up for it Nottingham, but you are up for it”.

Review by Josie Opal