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PIGEON WIGS – Release psych-pop nugget: “Iron Dynamite”

• 7th Jul 2023

Today, Cardiff’s PIGEON WIGS release their eagerly awaited mini-album ‘Rock By Numbers’. 

An amorphous box of tricks that shape-shifts between psych, blues and indie rock with seamless time-warping chic, the quintet are also pleased to present one of its standout moments: “Iron Dynamite”.

The final track to be spotlighted from the record, “Iron Dynamite” is a whimsical, merry-go-round of 60s-indebted psychelia to rival the Electric Prunes, Strawberry Alarm Clock, or frankly anything to be heard on the seminal ‘Nuggets’ compilation.

Revolving around a guitar lick as slick as a new pair of winkle-pickers 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”.”

“Iron Dynamite” arrives hot on the heels of recent singles including the Rolling Stones saluting “Radiation Blues” and the wormhole whirlwind that is “Hold Up!”; drawing attention from the likes of Louder Than War, The Independent, The Rodeo, and The Line of Best Fit, with the latter praising “[Pigeon Wigs are] now in full force in bringing their vision to life: a hybrid, retro/futuristic, psychedelic-shaded sound.”

These singles are just the tip of a knickerbocker glory of delights waiting to be scooped out of their first mini-album release ‘Rock By Numbers’ (out today, via Clwb Music). Recorded before Pigeon Wigs had played a single gig, the duo of Jugessur and Franklin-Williams wrote the 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 really 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.”

With a special launch show for ‘Rock By Numbers’ being planned in their stomping ground of Cardiff for later this month, don’t miss the opportunity 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

Newly sprung from the fertile soil of Cardiff’s blossoming music scene, Pigeon Wigs are a five-piece alt-rock band whose riff-laden fuzzy tones and melodic harmonies come crashing together to form a wild beast like no other. Tackling everything from social commentary to dysfunctional relationships and alien abductions, the band was born out of a writing partnership between Harry Franklin-Williams and Louis Jugessur and came to life when the pair “corralled some of Cardiff’s finest to record a new project”. 

Having already attracted glowing praise from the likes of BBC Introducing and BBC Radio Wales, Pigeon Wigs have gained glowing reviews from a range of alt-rock contemporaries such as Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard and Panic Shack who enthused: “all of Jagger’s love-children couldn’t write a better banger than this.”