The Beat Surrender

I really had been building The Pigeon Detectives up live to the two people who were coming with me to the gig at Leeds Town Hall, my reputation (if that’s what you can call it!) would have been shot to pieces, especially as one of them had never been to a proper gig before so this was their first taste of live music by a band (they had seen A1 previously but that really doesn’t count!)

The weather was doing it’s very best to spoil things as it put a real dampner on everyones bank holiday weekend, a few beers in one of Leeds finer bars and that seemed strangely irrelevent to us, after all we were seeing the next big thing fro Leeds in a very special venue in the bands home city the day before the release of their debut album, local pride aside it doesn’t get much better than this does it?

The Pigeon Detectives i’d seen before at Leeds Metropoloitan University were very much in evidence again tonight, but first up a quick mention for the venue and two very different support bands. As we were on the guest list (well two of us anyway) we were ushered in through the side door of this old building, you had to take a lift up to the level the gig was on and if you chose to you could climb the sweeping stairs to visit the loos, it was all very grand. Inside the beer was well organised and you had a decent view in the spacious room, i’d certainly like to see them putting on more gigs here.

When we got in Last Gang were playing there anthemic indie-guitar and they were going down pretty damn well, most people seemed to enjoy their short set and they could be ones to look out for in the future. There was a sense of anticipation for the next act as the Pigeon’s Myspace site had promised very, very special guests. Ok so it didn’t turn out to be local heroes such as The Cribs or The Kaiser Chiefs but you can’t ask for much more than the ressurection of Elvis can you!

He strode down the steps onto the stage complete with white sequined jump suit and belted out five classic Elvis tracks, the crowd got over their initial disappointment and were soon bouncing around to him, the perfect warm up for the crowd and because it was a one man show with just a microphone it meant that we didn’t have long to wait for the main event.

The local heroes strode out on stage for the final night of the UK tour and they absolutely rocked the place, not just with single Romantic Type, I Found Out and I’m Not Sorry (which was the biggest reaction of the night) but also with the other album tracks that everyone already knew word for word.

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