THE Pigeon Detectives play a home-city gig tomorrow night in Leeds on the last leg of their first headline tour since the end of 2008.

In the intervening years, the West Yorkshire band took their leave, recharged and spent much of 2010 writing and demoing in New York before recording in earnest last autumn at Brooklyn Recording Company.

The resulting album, Up, Guards And At’Em, was issued last week on the Dance To The Radio label, as the Leeds quintet look to build on sales of more than half a million for their first two records.

Last year found lead singer Matt Bowman combining band commitments in New York with owning Montey’s Rock Café in Micklegate, York (more on that later).

“The band had been to New York five or six times, playing three gigs and going on vacation there, and I’ve subsequently been back twice as I’ve made so many friends, and we keep going there as it’s a great place to be,” says Matt. “You can work till 2am and if you’re still buzzing you can still go out afterwards!”

The Pigeon Detectives spent a month in Brooklyn recording songs, followed by a month on the Lower East Side in Manhattan making further recordings. “We really took a different approach this time as we had the basis for the songs already written in Leeds and then took them over there,” says Matt.

“We were really careful with the choice of producer, Justin Gerrish, who we trusted as we’d done a lot of research and asked around and had a fair few phone conversations with him.

“It’s the first time we’ve worked with a producer of our own age, and we kind of let him into the gang, so it wasn’t such a teacher and pupil relationship!”

Not that they had not enjoyed making the second album, Emergency, with legendary producer Stephen Street. “We had a great time with him. He’d be drinking wine and eating cheese and we’d be playing pool and drinking bottles of White Lightning, so there was an age gap there!” says Matt.

The recording methods contrasted with their working practice with Will Jackson for their debut, Wait For Me. “With the first album we pretty much plugged in and played; for this new album we wanted to be more experimental,” says Matt.

“The song-writing took a lot longer, though we never worry about that because we’re on our own label, so we don’t have suits turning up at the studio putting pressure on us. We wrote 40 songs and recorded 15 of them, which have more tempo changes than we used to do, which people might not have expected from us.”

Away from The Pigeon Detectives, Matt continues to enjoy his involvement with Montey’s in York. “It’s just a great place with a great atmosphere, and as a really good friend of mine was the bar manager, I’d spent a lot of time there over the past five years, so when the chance came to buy it, it was a no-brainer.

“I’ve been lucky, keeping the same staff and same clientele, and I try to be as relaxed as possible about running it.”

Matt holds his own indie-music event on Wednesdays, the Gun Club. “We’ve been doing it for three months so far, and we’ve had The Sunshine Underground from Leeds doing a DJ set; me and Peanut from Kaiser Chiefs have done a DJ set; and my band did two sets there in December, which were pretty much unannounced,” he says. “That was the first time we’d played four or five new songs, so that was a coup for York.”

The Pigeon Detectives play Leeds Metropolitan University tomorrow night and Leeds Festival at Bramham Park, near Wetherby, on August 28.