PIGEON WIGS
Rock By Numbers (Clwb Music)
“I don’t know what I’m for…” A rattled honesty flows from Harry Franklin-Williams on You Play Me (Live), a stripped-back acoustic number and penultimate track of his quintet Pigeon Wigs’ debut mini-album, Rock By Numbers. While they might be a name you’re unfamiliar with as yet, their influences coincide to make one big ball of psych-pop rock’n’roll that translates as well as its mother tongue onstage. On this release, it sees the band testing that same translation to record.
Produced and mixed by pie-fingered bird bandname kin Tom Rees, singles Hold Up! and Death Of A King still hold the momentum they did as standalones: this is the band feverish, passionately conquering riffs with swagger and grit.
Though the second half of the mini-album does feel slightly overshadowed by its first, Williams’ vocals are most mighty during Heavy Low. On side B, offerings such as Going Nowhere feel like an old time blues time capsule; Epilogue 6, a folk-rock supergroup moment. Expect thrills, no frills, rough around the edges; confident but not cocky, pigeon not rooster.
words EMMA WAY