Pete & The Pirates: Little Death (A Review)

A year or so ago I reviewed an album by a band called Tap Tap and I trashed it. Thomas Sanders of Tap Tap, is now part of a newer band called Pete & the Pirates, and unlike Vice Magazine who gave their first full length album, Little Death, a 0 out of 10, I think Sanders has made huge improvements with this endeavor and I’m totally digging it. Even the one song “She Doesn’t Belong to Me” which was originally a Tap Tap song I like as a Pete & the Pirates track.

The UK five-some, composed of 2 Pete’s and assumingly 3 Pirates, are an indie version of popped up punk. They utilize every instrument in creating catchy staccato rock musical patterns. At times each of the instruments work together perfectly creating synched and undifferentiated noise (“Knots, “Come On Feet”, “Bright Lights”) while on other songs specific bass, guitar, or drum parts take a primary role (“Mr. Understanding”,
”Ill Love”, “She Doesn’t Belong to Me”). Pete & the Pirates make the respective sounds of their instruments fit together as perfectly as WALL-E and EVE’s hands, and they also do it with their voices. In Tap Tap, Sanders solo high-pitched voice was borderline annoying. In Pete & the Pirates, the two Pete’s who play guitar and bass lend their lower voices to the vocals and create a balanced harmony in the singing.

Yet despite this togetherness of the instruments and the vocals, the lyrics are all over the place. On “Come on Feet” Sanders sings, “You don’t touch the phone/You stay at home/Your smile is fake/And I like your face.” That disconnect is pretty much reflective of the lyrical lacking of Pete & the Pirates. But I’ll completely look past this issue since this group makes music that is unlike any other band, while Tap Tap was just like every other band. For that I give much kudos to Thomas Sanders for growing so much musically in such a short time and resultantly making an album that is worth every listen.