Pigeon Pit - Leash Aggression [LP]

Pigeon Pit is the self described “maximalist journaling” songwriting project of Olympia, WA  front-woman Lomes Oleander. With a scrapbook approach to storytelling, Oleander pieces together vignettes of a contemplative struggle for self-acceptance throughout her life: From the anarchic punk scene of surf town Santa Cruz, CA that served as her foundation in the early 2010’s, to chemical escapism in dank basements in Seattle, bouncing throughout queer North American counter-culture by old cars and freight trains, and teaching kindergarten. 

Artistically reinvigorated by a temporarily debilitating injury in 2020, Oleander began fleshing out her sound with a full band featuring violin and pedal steel guitar on Feather River Canyon Blues, channeling both psychedelic country and DIY pop punk while evoking Gram Parsons, the Weakerthans, and PS Eliot. In songs exploring queerness, grief, attachment, and political struggle for a better world, Pigeon Pit maintains a DIY ethos, playing packed intimate punk house basements and free generator shows while also making an appearance on on NPR’s Tiny Desk and touring with Laura Jane Grace and AJJ.

Leash Aggression is the second full-length Pigeon Pit LP of 2025. In January, they released Crazy Arms, which saw the group apply their expansive collage approach sonically, weaving field recordings of birds and laughter into a dense lyrical landscape further augmented by cello and electric guitar. On Leash Aggression, a contrast of bare-bones instrumentation lets the songs speak for themselves while showcasing their maturity as a live band. It’s their most explicitly political record to date, and Oleander’s songwriting acts as immersive world-building where possibility is more than science fiction. She proposes “love for humanity, rather than fear of certain futures, as a political motivator” and “hope as an invitation to act in the face of bleakness, instead of something made impossible by it.”