For want of a better term, we’ll call it “nursery-rhyme indie”: that blend of rinky-dink guitars and lairy, ba-ba-ba vocals that so many of the post-Monkeys set, from The Pigeon Detectives to The Wombats, specialise in.
Mr Understanding, the forthcoming single from Reading’s Pete & The Pirates, is clearly in that tradition – the guitar hook is so cartoonishly simple it makes The Strokes’ 12:51 sound like The Mars Volta – but there’s a nerdish, uptight quality to vocalist Tommy Sanders’ delivery that sets the band apart, if only marginally, from the indie-disco pack.
Certainly, there’s nothing here to justify some of the critical opprobrium Pete & The Pirates have attracted in their short career. One writer dismissed them as “Shoreditch-souled trilby merchants”- which seems a touch harsh, especially since they don’t even come from London. Or wear trilbies.
Mr Undersanding precedes the band’s debut album Little Death, which is released 18 February.
For want of a better term, we’ll call it “nursery-rhyme indie”: that blend of rinky-dink guitars and lairy, ba-ba-ba vocals that so many of the post-Monkeys set, from The Pigeon Detectives to The Wombats, specialise in.
