Psych-pop Cardiff rockers Pigeon Wigs have released their mini-album ‘Rock By Numbers’ and are playing a hometown gig at Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach on July 22 to launch it.
Revolving around a guitar lick as slick as a new pair of winklepickers on Carnaby Street in 1967, the riff was conjured by the band’s Louis Jugessur as he tried to emulate the vintage grooves of the hit ‘Mama Told Me Not To Come’ by fellow Pontypridd legend Tom Jones.
Instantly plugging-in to its psychedelic vibe, frontman Harry Franklin-Williams assembled a kaleidoscopic spiral of words at once in-tune with the track and just a little removed from reality…
As Harry explains: “Iron Dynamite is probably my favourite song of the record lyrically, Louis wrote such a psychedelic riff and I wanted to build on that as much as I could. I made a Jenga tower out of 60s-inspired metaphors and muso-nerd references that still never fails to put a smile on my face.
“The verses are swirling psych with a portion of madness while the chorus is much more your classic 60s pop lyrics, simple and direct but with my trademark cynicism at the end, “it’s just another line”.”
Recorded before Pigeon Wigs had played a single gig, the duo of Jugessur and Franklin-Williams wrote the new mini-album over the course of just a few weeks.
Making for an impressively accomplished debut release that spans alternative rock references from across the ages, the band say they just wanted to “arrive on the scene fully formed, like a baby with a moustache or furniture not from IKEA”.
The 11-track record was produced and mixed by the esteemed Tom Rees of fellow Cardiff band Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard. Speaking about the mini-album on the day of its release, the band’s axeman-in-chief Louis Jugessur expresses: “It means a lot to release Rock By Numbers because it’s been in the pipeline for so long, we’ve had so many hurdles in the way but now it’s finally getting out there. I’m proud of what we’ve written, it feels like one solid body of work where all the pieces fit together to paint a pretty lil picture”.
While frontman Harry Franklin-Williams adds: “Through a series of funding delays, rescheduling meetings, and global catastrophe we have waded, to be coming out on the other side is akin to drinking fresh water after being lost in the desert or that moment you realise both nostrils are clear after an especially bad cold. This is only the beginning, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Following Saturday’s launch show, there are further opportunities to catch the band at these other headline dates and festival shows as follows:
PIGEON WIGS – UK LIVE DATES
JULY
22/07/23 – Cardiff, Clwb Ifor Bach – ‘Rock By Numbers’ Launch Show
26/07/23 – Bristol, Crofters Rights
29/07/23 – Kendal Calling Festival
AUGUST
05/08/23 – Newport, Le Pub headline
17/08/23 – Green Man Festival
25/08/23 – Shambala Festival