Pete & the Pirates - Little Death

General Ratings:

Rating: 8
Breadth of Appeal: 7
Consistency of Quality: 8

RIYL: The Futureheads, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers

Further Listening: Tap Tap, Ra Ra Riot, Foreign Born

Place of Origin: Reading, England

Sound/Instrument List: Electric Guitar, Bass, Drums, Vocals, Backup Vocals, Handclaps, Tambourine

Mood Tones: Inspiring of loyalty to a country or creed that isn’t yours.

Song Highlights: Knots, Moving, Bears

Favorite Lyrics:

“Hey now, what’s the big idea? /
Don’t bring those good looks ‘round here.” (from “Eyes Like Tar”)

“You and me trying hard to remember /
how we ever started out with our sights so high.” (from “Mr. Understanding”)

“We take every chance, /
and I’ll take you to France.” (from “Moving”)

Further Thoughts:

I once stood in a field with several thousand people as we chanted “We hope that you choke” over and over at the top of our lungs. That’s perhaps one of the stranger anthemic lyrics to be found, and probably few bands but Radiohead could pull it off. Truly hooking hooks are usually forged of fairly plain lyrics, and perhaps necessarily so. Thus the charge of cliché and bad or throwaway lyricism often seemed misplaced when leveled against a certain kind of band. Some of my favorite lyrics, ever:

“And all of the time you thought I was sad, /
I was trying to remember your name.” (from Stars’ “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead”)

“The Yukon keeps me up all night.” (from Broken Social Scene’s “Almost Crimes”)

“You’re the one who’s riding around on a leopard. /
You’re the one who’s throwing dead birds in the air.” (from Sunset Rubdown’s “Up On Your Leopard, Upon the End of Your Feral Days”)

“I’ve read the right book /
to interpret your look. /
You were knocking me down /
with the palm of your eye.” (from Joanna Newsom’s “Peach, Plum, Pear”)

These aren’t the sorts of lines that casually pack in a stadium-sized crowd or are ever going to flood the airwaves, and there’s nothing at all contingent about that, it seems to me. Once you rehearse the tired arguments about people’s lack of taste, you have to admit how strange such lyrics are and that they're probably working, if they work for you, on a rather strange part of your sensibility. “I can’t get no ... satisfaction,” “It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled,” even “Hey, roll over DJ / You’re spinning away / all my time”: for better or worse, this is necessarily the stuff of most hooks.

Thomas Sanders of Pete & the Pirates seems to spend about a third or so of his life singing about getting into and out of bed:

“I’m too tired to go to bed. /
We can stay awake all night. /
And when people get up to go to work, /
we’ll be holding each other tight.

Turn off all the lights. /
Come hibernate with me. /
Oh, mommy bear and daddy bear, /
as angry as can be.” (from “Bears”)

“Time for bed. /
Find a girl and go to bed. /
Close your eyes. /
Stars are falling from the sky.” (from “Dry Wings”)

“Get out of bed--it’s the wrong one. /
Made out of lead, get dressed instead. /
Hit your head and get your shoes on. /
Get out of bed and get your socks on.” (from “Knots”)

“It’s so cold this morning /
my breath comes out like steam. /
I got up in such a hurry /
I’m still stuck inside my dream.” (from “She Doesn’t Belong to Me”)

It’d be easy enough to put this down on the page as bad poetry and make fun of it. That would completely miss the point that they’re hugely affecting, sung the way the are. It’s not just that the melodies are good--that’s true of Broken Social Scene, Sunset Rubdown, et. al. as well. This is full-throated pop, whatever the style of the guitar work underneath. In a hipster Jerry McGuire, Tom Cruise (now Joseph Gordon-Levitt?) would scan right past Broken Social Scene and the rest and settle on “Dry Wings” in place of “Free Fallin’” and scream along in the car.

Hence my hesitancy to rate lyrics apart from their music. Lyrics are lyrics, not poetry, and they’re encountered always and only over music. Saunders’ lyrics would probably be terrible over Iron & Wine’s or Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s music, but they’re exactly right found where they are. Of course no one much hesitates to criticize a singer’s voice, or the guitar work on an album, or its production, and those things are always and only encountered where they are as well. The lyrics/music split seems rather different to me as it’s the obvious split of popular music, and speaking of each in isolation isn’t as obviously artificial or momentary as criticizing someone’s tenor. Thus it reinforces the mistaken idea that pop music just is music plus poetry.

There’s something of the revivalists in Pete & the Pirates, but they’re finally too fun, too, well, joyous for that. Remember “Take Me Out,” Franz Ferdinand’s first big single, which came out during The Strokes’ brief period of world domination? The first minute or so of that song sounds exactly like The Strokes and their careful posturing. Then, right at the 55 second mark there’s a hit and the song switches to a 2/2 disco beat, saying (approximately): “Fuck this, let’s give them something to dance to.” This is the mold Pete & the Pirates are working in. I imagine they know their Gang of Four just as forwards and backwards as straight-up revivalists such as Young Knives, but they’re willing to drop their cool and admit that angular downstabs, even at their best, finally get a bit boring (isn’t this the problem with Gang of Four: finally they’re too cool?). Further, they don’t clearly sit as part of the specifically post-punk revival. There’s a bit of punk, new wave, and garage to be had as well. And so the mix is finally much more intriguing than The Hives or The Strokes or The Rapture ever were (I suppose all these bands still exist, but no one cares, right?).

Electric Guitar, Bass, Drums: that’s it. Pete & the Pirates make use of only the rock band starter kit and Little Death puts forward a full range of songs. Its anthems--“Bears,” “Dry Wings,” “Ill Love,” “Knots,” "Come On Feet" and more--are its defining feature, but there are fully-developed, slower brooders as well--“Moving” being the standout--and harder punk numbers (“Bright Lights,” “Lost in the Woods”). “Mr. Understanding” features a great Cardigans-esque lead guitar line. The backup vocals fill out the sound and there are handclaps and nonverbal lyrics galore.

The couple songs they’ve put out post-Little Death--the single “Jennifer” and b-sides “Blood Gets Thin” and “Knife” have all been excellent as well, so one has high hopes for Pete & the Pirates. Sanders’ other band, Tap Tap, is very much worth checking out as well (though one wishes their album, Lanzafame, didn’t have quite such a demo feel to it).

[Update: So I was listening to this album completely out of order (simply in alphabetical order by title). I wholeheartedly approve of the way it actually opens: "I'm not scared of you, darling! / I'm in love with you, darling!" ("Ill Love").]