The Pigeon Detectives @ The Sugarmill

At long last! I finally get the chance to see my childhood band The Pigeon Detectives perform live, and where else would you be than The Sugarmill on a Friday night with a sold out crowd listening to one of the best bands to grace us in the mid-late 2000’s.

Supporting The Pigeon Detectives on their Broken Glances album tour is St. Albans indie quartet Franklin. Bursting onto the scene in 2016. Alex Frankl (Vocal/Guitar), Brandon Hargrave (Lead Guitar/Keys), Seb Hakim (Drums) and Barney Trent (Bass) came bursting out onto the stage with their energetic mood and their entrance music set the crowd up for a great time.

Tracks ‘Dirty Drug’ and ‘Skream’ seemed to go down well with the crowd, even when Hargrave had broken his finger just days before heading on tour, but full credit to him, still managed to put in an amazing display. Franklin have previously supported The Pigeon Detectives back in their home county at Hatfields Forum in 2015 for Hertfordshire University’s Freshers Week which clearly put them at the front of their minds before picking their support.

The Pigeon Detectives released their 5th studio LP in February ‘Broken Glances’ wich has taken a completely different approach to their previous work with ‘Wolves’ and ‘Lose Control’ taking them out of their comfort zone of classic hard core indie rock, and I have to say they pulled it off extremely well.

Of course, they played their hit singles ‘This Is An Emergency’ ‘Take Her Back’ and ‘Romantic Type’, which as you can imagine ended up in huge mosh pits and being pushed and shoved about in everyone’s crazy excitement. Frontman, Matt Bowman was kind enough to throw out bottles of water for everyone to share, even chucking out a few towels.

Bowman also jumped onto the barrier to put his hand out to people so they could get a fist pump (including myself) and even put his sweaty hair onto a lads cap at the front when he tried to give it to him, a nice gesture and I was surprised no one tried to steal it!

The surprises don’t just stop there. You normally see someone like Adele taking someone’s phone or inviting someone on stage, but Matt decided to take a couple of lads phones who were filming and walked around the stage filming everyone play and himself singing before handing it back – some bloody lucky lad to get that!

After the gig the fun didn’t stop there, although they guys were to play in Manchester the next day, they still had time to neck a few tequilla shots brought by fans and get a few pictures before leaving to get a good nights sleep.