Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 28/05/07
Label: Dance To The Radio

No one would be mad enough to insist that pop music without socio-political comment or existential resonance is worthless - it would, after all, invalidate artists from Abba to ZZ Top - but music which lacks both and is utterly devoid of emotional impact, well, that's another kettle of kippers entirely. What on earth, one wonders, would be the point?

The debut album by Leeds quintet The Pigeon Detectives (easily the worst band name in recent British history) pulls off that very hat trick. In many ways, "Wait For Me" sounds like not so much an artistic expression of the band that recorded it as a 12-track sound tag carefully directed at a demographic - in the case of The Pigeon Detectives, late teens obsessed with lager, lasses and getting well lairy. Nothing particularly wrong with that (it's honest, at least), but any decent record gradually filters through to the parts others can't refresh. With The Pigeon Detectives, what you hear is all you get.

Perhaps they're no less unimaginative than The Little Ones, The Cribs, Tiny Dancers or any of the other anodyne bands currently swirling about in the miasma of mediocrity that is indie pop, but for a debut album, "Wait For Me" is shockingly short on ideas, élan and genuine exhilaration. Modelled after the punky power pop of Buzzcocks and (especially) The Strokes, it lacks both the bewildered anger of the former and the bracing attitude of the latter, its yell-along tuneage crushingly quotidian.

No doubt singer Matt Bowman imagines his lyrics - which stretch no further than the ennui felt at the end of yet another long, Friday night or the disappointment of failing to pull the cutest girl at a party - to possess the poetry of honesty but, despite occasional Costello-isms such as "I see your conscience is wrapped round your ankles", (the title track) they're depressingly prosaic.

"I Can't Control Myself" begins in a promisingly downbeat manner, suggesting The Pigeon Detectives are on the scent of something more contemplative and heartfelt but no, after two bars they're off, again galumphing down their well-worn path of ringing guitar lines, choppy, stop-start rhythms and straining vocals. Perhaps live, their sweaty enthusiasm carries them through (sold-out tours would suggest as much). But here, the songs on "Wait For Me" spread torpor like a hot knife spreads butter. Hopefully, they won't hang about too long.

    by Sharon O'Connell