Pigeon Detectives London Astoria May 23rd

With the threat of having to choose between The Holloways and The Pigeon Detectives at the Great Escape, we decided to blow off the relations and spend a day and night in London seeing the Pigeons in their own gig with the faithful. So this was the third time, once at SXSW with music biz folks being cool, once at Great Escape with 18 yr old indie fans. This was a 14 plus show so quite a few little girls all set to scream backed by a set of 18 plus Indie lads set to crowd surf.
The first band was a dire Cheap Hotel, please if you see this name run as fast as you can. Awful trite dire music. But we managed to suffer through without cutting off our ears though that did seem like a feasible action at points.
Then we got Air Traffic, I definitely like this band and they are getting good press, but I would say that their music isn't really dance able but they put on a nice show and their enthusiasm for playing The Astoria is cute.
The Pigeons! starting with Romantic Type the show got off to a rowdy start, in fact it was pretty rowdy through out with regular crowd surfers being removed. All the hits were played including Dick'ead and Stop and Go where Matt chided everyone who knew the song as being illegal downloaders and told us to go buy the alum come Monday. Matt climbed the side extorting people to clap, climbed the drum kit several times and basically performed himself to exhaustion. Just another regular Pigeons gig. Me, I like to watch the interactions of Dave and my favorite Pigeon Ryan.
I came out wet, sweaty and generally knackered. It is fun to see how these bands are received in their native element.
NOTE to the silly inefficient girl in the box office who kept us waiting a good three minutes while folks were pouring into the gig, thanks so much for being inefficient you meant we were further to the side than we would have liked and beside some complete idiot little boys who didn't dance and managed to let some silly little girls in beside them then tried to push me aside. If you guys let your sex drive to tell you to allow some girls in then give up your place do not push to the side pissing off the people beside you.
photos and a scan of the set list to follow.