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So you’re playing the biggest, grandest venue in your hometown on Saturday night, one normally reserved for graduation ceremonies, and it’s jam-packed with 2,000 of the faithful followers who’ve helped catapult your new single to within groping distance of the Top 10. The entire family is here, not to mention friends you didn’t even know you had. Your long-awaited debut album comes out on Monday and it’s a Bank Holiday weekend to boot. How do you celebrate? With dirty, stained pants of course.

“This is the one where people chuck their underwear onstage: I want to see thongs from the girls and boxers from the boys,” Pigeons singer Matt Bowman barks by way of introduction to ‘Caught In Your Trap’. Needless to say, countless undergarments find their way on to the stage. It’s a more accommodating response than support act Air Traffic received – they came offstage more depressed than Editors without Xanax after repetitive chants of “you’re shit” from the crowd (in fact, the crowd actually politely and disappointingly refrained from lynching them and were instead chanting “Yorkshire”, but we’re not going to tell them that).

If there was ever any doubt that The Pigeon Detectives could make the step up from the toilets of Wakefield to Kaiser-sized domes like this, it’s cast aside by the end of opener ‘Romantic Type’. In fact, every single one of these tunes is a direct mainline fix, like the taste in the back of your throat after necking a straight double. Take ‘I Found Out’, a Ramones-esque riot that practically renders the PA useless such is the crowd response, or ‘Better Not Look My Way’, which breaks the golden three-minute punk rule but gets away with it by making a simple, four-note riff sound like the most vital thing you’ve heard all year.
Graduation ceremonies? As Bowman climbs his treacherous speaker stack to deliver verses from a death-defying perch he might as well be collecting first class honours.

Rob Webb

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Date/Time	Venue	Town/City	Seetickets	Viagogo
Oct 17, 2013	The Lemon Tree	Aberdeen	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £14	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 18, 2013	Fat Sams	Dundee	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £14	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 19, 2013	The Electric Circus	Edinburgh	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £14	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 21, 2013	Warehouse 34	Newcastle	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £14	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 22, 2013	Engine Shed	Lincoln	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £12	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 25, 2013	Academy 2	Manchester	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £14	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 26, 2013	The Slade Rooms, Broad Street	Wolverhampton	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £12	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 27, 2013	Gloucester Guildhall	Gloucester	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £14	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 29, 2013	The Globe	Cardifff	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £14	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 30, 2013	Koko	London	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £16	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 30, 2013	Koko, Camden	London	Tickets not currently available.	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Oct 31, 2013	Wedgewood Rooms	Portsmouth/southsea	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £14	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets
Nov 02, 2013	Leeds Metropolitan University	Leeds	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets from £14	Buy The Pigeon Detectives Tickets