The Pigeon Detectives: 'I felt if this was my last record, let’s be a bit more honest'

The 40-year-old has spent it in Middlesbrough, filming content for the Leeds band’s social media platforms while seeing the first run of their sixth studio album, TV Show, at the independent plant Press On Vinyl. “Do you know, it was like being on a school trip,” he says. “I’ve never been to a vinyl pressing plant before. To see our own record being done, honestly it was really good.

“Sam (Robson, the band’s co-manager) kind of lured me there (on the premise) of having to do social content and videos, but when I got there I thoroughly enjoyed it...We physically got involved in moulding it, putting it through the presses, trimming off the edges.”

TV Show sees The Pigeon Detectives return to the kind of energetic, anthemic guitar pop with which the Rothwell quintet first made their name in 2007. It’s something of an about-face from the pensive, largely electronic sound of their 2017 album Broken Glance. It could also be their swan song, Bowman suggests.

“I think our reasons for making a record had changed somewhat,” he says, with characteristic honesty.

“We had no intention of making another album after Broken Glances. We didn’t particularly enjoy the experience of making it, it wasn’t particularly successful, and it certainly wasn’t many fans’ favourite. The band was just a bit flat afterwards in terms of creative output – albeit as a band we seem to have had a semi resurgence from a nostalgia point of view – but we had no intentions of making a new record, that bit of the band’s history had been put to bed until lockdown.

“Then, coming out of lockdown, we had the excitement of getting back in front of crowds and playing festivals. The whole atmosphere surrounding The Pigeon Detectives seemed to change and we all just looked at each other and thought ‘Let’s have one more run at this’.”

Bowman hopes the new material will help them avoid the trap of becoming “a Pigeon Detectives covers band” who simply perform songs from their first three albums. “The aim of this album was to have four or five absolute bangers that were going to stand up against some of our more popular material and would be able to segway into a live set with ease (and) not be songs where the crowd would lose interest and wait for Wait For Me or I Found Out or go to the bar.

“We wrote a record that would keep people’s attention in a live set...Hopefully people will go away thinking ‘I will buy that new record, they sounded great live’.”

It was while they were opening Tramlines festival in Sheffield in 2021 that they detected a renewed appetite among music lovers for guitar pop. “The energy – you could see it, you could feel it, you could smell it,” Bowman recalls. “People just wanted that release, they wanted to jump about, they didn’t want to stare at their shoes listening to keyboards and synthesisers. They wanted someone to bang a distortion pedal on and hit the drums as hard as they could.

“You could feel it, and that gig was a real watershed moment for us as a band, we all looked at each other and went, ‘There might be life in the old dog yet’.”

Bassist Dave Best has described TV Show as a celebration of the band’s journey. Bowman suggests that “each band member is going to interpret it differently because we all had to fight different demons to get to a space where we could work together again creatively or commit to writing a new record.

“I’m responsible for 90 per cent of the lyrics on the record and I think for me it wasn’t so much a celebration as an exorcism, it was like ‘this is my last chance to say something, let’s say something a bit more meaningful than boys meets girl, buys girl a drink, they all live happily ever after’. That was fine for the first few records but I felt if this was my last record, let’s be a bit more honest.

“There are some home truths on there, there are some admissions of vulnerability, there’s some storytelling where I’ve perhaps not been in a particularly great place and there’s been a reliance on drink and other things probably more serious than drink, but in the end it’s all soundtracked to some quite high energy, sparkling, more euphoric music, so I think it’s a nice juxtaposition.

“I love the record, I can’t necesarily say that about Broken Glances. I’m really pleased I got one last chance at putting down some of my thoughts and experiences in a form that will last forever. So yeah, I suppose it is a celebration. I can guarantee we’re not going to make a seventh record, but not in a negative way, just we did this for a reason and that reason has been satisfied.

“We all feel great about it and we’re probably closer as a group than we were before Covid; why ruin that by trying to force anything else? This record came easy because we were enjoying doing it, but it’s quite hard to find those moments of creativity when you’ve been doing it for 20 years. I think to try to do it again would maybe feel forced, so this is it. We love it, we’re happy with it and maybe it is a celebration, so I can see where Dave’s coming from.”

The song Summer Girl is a “shout out” to Bowman’s wife Jenn, who went through difficult times during lockdown due to health issues. “Some people experienced lockdown but they could go to work, they could go to the shop, they could pop in on their mum and dad, Jenn’s lockdown was being locked in a house for fear of death,” he says. “She was immuno compromised, she’d had a kidney transplant. I saw first-hand what locking a person up and restricting their movement entirely could do to someone, it was harrowing, really.

“Me doing the simplest things like going to Morrisons I felt guilty about because I was getting to jump in my car, drive down to the shop, walk round, bump into people albeit accidently, but have a chat. Just doing the smallest, most mundane things I kind of felt guilty about.

“But then the summer of 2021 where we played Tramlines came and I said it was a bit of a watershed moment for the band, it was kind fo a watershed moment for my wife as well. She could finally go out again and started going to festivals. It was just a great summer that, it was brilliant in so many ways for me personally, for my wife, for the band. Coming out of the back of such a torried experience of lockdown, it was a release.

“That song is quite complicated. There’s quite a lot of whinging and moaning and sulking in the song, but effectively the strapline ‘summer girl’, that’s meant to be celebratory, that’s meant to be a positive way of describing my wife. She’d been locked up for nearly two years and went out that summer and got some sense of normality back.”

TV Show is out now. The Pigeon Detectives play two shows for Crash Records at The Wardrobe, Leeds on July 13. Their tour visits The Welly, Hull on November 16 and Sheffield Foundry on November 18. www.thepigeondetectives.com