Drenched in the ever-changing sentimentality of the human experience, “crazy arms,” the latest release from Washington folk-punk and high-energy country band Pigeon Pit, hit the stage at Harlow’s last Friday, March 7.
Lomes Oleander started Pigeon Pit as a solo project in Olympia, WA in 2014, where she wrote and played songs pondering the highs and lows of humanity with her distinctive husky, punk-acoustic rigor. Friends of Oleander naturally joined the band after collaborating during the pandemic, bringing Pigeon Pit to the six-piece it is today.
“It was just a really cool, inspiring, fun time,” said Oleander. “There was a lot of time for creative projects and stuff, so I started playing with my friends who I’d been hanging out with anyway. It just kind of came together really easily, honestly.”
When Pigeon Pit started as a solo project, Oleander was playing in house shows and small outdoor venues, immersing herself in the intimacy of the DIY scene for years before garnering a small following. Oleander said performing under the anonymity of basements, baseball fields and other abandoned zones is still a personal favorite, even after performing in larger stages and theaters as a full six-unit band.
“If you’re playing at a place where there’s not supposed to be a show, the energy is instantly so much better,” Oleander said. “It is awesome and fun because you’re somewhere you’re not supposed to be.”
It was not until 2020 that “Nights Like These,” a track from the 2015 release “Shut In,” received massive traction on TikTok. It was an unexpected and amusing time for Oleander and her band, who were hidden from the social media spotlight until then.
“It got a lot of attention from people that had never seen me play before, which was cool, but it’s so different from slogging away at touring and making fans by people who haven’t heard you before or by word of mouth,” Oleander said.
Shortly after, the band performed for an NPR Tiny Desk Concert in 2022 following their record, “feather river canyon blues,” which was released on the first day of that year.
The band’s latest album “crazy arms” was released Jan. 17 this year. As the name suggests, Oleander said her artistic direction was nonspecific, wild and unbound to any guidelines. To her, it was meant to shuffle in every direction and feel maximalist in its stinging lyricism and sound, paying artistic homage to the complexities of being human.
“It is just a crazy experience being a human being,” Oleander said. “The only way that you can approach that is by loving yourself and not letting doubt and fear hold you back, and feeling total freedom to go in any direction that you’re pulled by.”
Inspired by bands like Defiance, Ohio, Lucinda Williams and Big Thief, Pigeon Pit’s latest record musters slide guitars and the soft strumming of acoustics in some tracks, while abruptly shifting in intensity, pace and emotion on songs that tie together rougher tones and angsty, punkish deliveries.
The band playfully staggered their way to the stage at Harlow’s on March 7, igniting friendly clamoring and hollering amongst the crowd as Oleander, seemingly indecisive, took her time in selecting which of the two acoustic guitars to use for the show.
Upon finally selecting her guitar, Oleander and all six of Pigeon Pit’s members fed the flame as they started the show with “bad advice,” singing while interacting with each other like life-sized marionettes at a puppet show, often leaning on each other and prancing around throughout the set.
The crowd quickly reciprocated, shouting out and keeping pace to some of Oleander’s quickest and most heartfelt lines as if she, along with the band, were conductors of an unruly choir, drunk on life.
Softer moments were also shared, sometimes without the other five members of the band, leaving Oleander alone on stage. It was during these moments that everyone in the room was hushed by the emotional weight of Oleander’s melancholic, more personal tracks.
In the same way that it started, Pigeon Pit’s show ended with a lively encore driven by the crowd’s colorful reactions that never faltered. It was clear that the band exuded something special and genuine, and the crowd was always more than ready to give their love and appreciation back, even if that love meant boldly confronting the world’s injustices through the grittiness of punk music.
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Although the band enjoys the collectiveness of working and touring together, Oleander still craves the raw intimacy of pursuing a solo career for future projects, a callback to what Pigeon Pit was when the only venues the “band” appeared in were small enough to fit within someone’s home.
Even when considering a return to solo work as a potential avenue for her career, Oleander continues to appreciate the idea of unity, empathy and platonic affection in and out of the art world.
“People shouldn’t feel fear to act like a person,” Oleander said. “They should make the world that they want to see in front of them just by helping each other and by actually doing cool sh*t.”
