“We were shit.” Tom Sanders, lead buccaneer with jangling pop swashbucklers Pete And The Pirates, thinks for a second.
“I mean painfully bad, I was listening to some old live recordings the other day and it was horrific.” It’s been a long voyage, excuse the pun, for this gang of misfits.
Right now the Pirates – Tom, brother Jonny on drums, bassist Pete Cattermoul, and guitarists David Thorpe and Peter Hefferan – might be the most exciting thing to come from Reading since Didz left a real band for a Libertines tribute act. But, if in 2008, it seems they might become an overnight success on the back of stunning single ‘Knots’, it should be remembered it’s taken them six years to get here. What suddenly went right, guys?
“Someone suggested we tune our guitars and sing properly,” says Tom through a mouthful of tar. Inspired. “Not that we want to lose that rawness, just that we needed to stop completely messing about, stop doing stuff like playing in our pajamas.” You read that right, reader. This is a band who aren’t unaccustomed to performing in their PJs. “We did it once and it was so fun – you don’t get sweaty and it’s really liberating so we did it again, but no more.” Pause. “Not unless there’s a good reason anyway.”
Nor will they be, as one reviewer suggested, dressing up as pirates anytime soon. Long John Silver and his ilk may have had great fashion sense (they wore eye patches, funny hats and kept a live animal on their shoulders, people), but Tom’s not having it.
“Pirates were the early rock ‘n’ roll stars, they drank a lot, traveled and probably spent half their time hallucinating – but we’re not gonna get up on stage dressed as fucking Black Beard. It’s just a name – and it’s a good one, people remember it.”
Who’s Pete?
“I dunno, man, there’s two Pete’s in the band, it’s good alliteration, good enough.” Good enough indeed. Same as the songs – wonderful spikes of colourful lo-fi skewered with a melancholy similar to that of the Good ship Shoes.
Their album, ‘Little Death’ is out February 18th. They’re on tour the same time. Go shiver your timbers down their front.
By Colin Drury
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