Quick! Somebody give Smash Hits CPR! Were the legendary pop-mag relic still going The Pipettes would surely be the subject of the double-page pull-out souvenir lyric poster special every other issue, a fresh pose a fortnight. And had Top of the Pops not been sabotaged and sent spinning towards the precipice leaking brake fluid, the candy-floss Brighton trio with a mean kick could easily have been the house band--all the polka dots you could dream of, week in, week out. The Pipettes understand what it is you love about pop music, see. "Dance with me, it will be alright". And the fact that falling in and out of love probably has a little something to do with it. "It's not love... but it's still a feeling". After a promising run of singles comes an album dense with sparkle, packed only with potential number ones in any reality that makes sense. It's a glorious scissors 'n' magazine cut 'n' paste collage fantasy of karaoke in Camden bars, '60s girl-groups haircuts, giddy harmonies, string licks like diamond encrusted accessories and passport pictures of past conquests. "Judy" is a witty bittersweet tale of teen identity, like Kenicke with their bootstraps pulled tight by the Shangri-Las, "Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me" is the Go Team trimmed by Phil Spector, and "One Night Stand" is an inverse "I Will Survive", brandishing an unbranded packet of old-fashioned girl power, the other party the victim. Any signs of life from Smash Hits yet? No? Shame, this should have wiped the floor at the Poll Winners' Party. --James Berry
The Pipettes
We Are the Pipettes
[Memphis Industries; 2006]
Rating: 8.4
In January, Pitchfork's Brent DiCrescenzo dissected a gathering interest in the sound and style of girl-group music, the early 1960s genre derided as frivolous and disposable and eventually overshadowed by British Invasion pop. Brent correctly pegged Brighton, England's the Pipettes as leading lights in a new wave of Brill Building-inspired indie pop but guessed that the seven-piece band-- three female singers along with four shadowy male musicians known as "the Cassettes"-- would be "unlikely to match" early single "I Like a Boy in Uniform (School Uniform)".
Happily, Brent was mistaken, as three subsequent singles, "Dirty Mind", "Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me", and "Pull Shapes"-- each an improvement on its predecessor-- have demonstrated. All three recent A-sides, plus a handful of other previously released tracks, now provide the bulk of debut album We Are the Pipettes. The album therefore doesn't maintain the band's forward momentum for those of us who have been collecting 45s and mp3s for the past year, but it's a giddy encapsulation of the best from a group enchantingly embracing both longstanding pop roots and a contemporary musical culture characterized by collisions between past and present and/or by seemingly incompatible musical styles.
On We Are the Pipettes the band's synchronized winks and nods and finger waggles to patriarchal 60s girl-group music are not so much retro as they are post-retro, the product of an age in which progression in pop music has all but been replaced by cultivation and fusion. The Pipettes' carefully constructed look-- polka-dot dresses, choreographed dances-- and promise to reclaim music from its post-Beatles devotion to ideas of authorship, technique, and "worthiness" are meant to frame them as out-of-step throwbacks, but thankfully their album instead recalls the lo-fi wall of sound and communal spirit of fellow indie block party bands the Go! Team, I'm From Barcelona, and U.S.E. That distinction makes the difference between karaoke and creating something that sounds unabashedly Now, as all great pop should.
The twist is meant to be that these three are sexually aggressive, have read their French feminism, own some riot grrrl records, and have distinct, unique personalities in a sort of Spice Girls way (you could call them Desperate Housewife Pipette, Sexy Librarian Pipette, and Mod Pipette). And while these three shrug off suitors, prefer one-night stands, and love a dirty mind, that's hardly a distinctive quality: Smart, sassy girls asserting their individuality and sexuality have been Page One of the female-voiced chart pop playbook for years.
No, the twist isn't that these are girl-group songs as performed by post-ERA females-- it's that they're girl-group songs as performed by three singers who are, well, no longer girls. If Brent and others are lamenting that We Are the Pipettes doesn't contain the outstanding single "I Like a Boy In Uniform (School Uniform)", a reason for its exclusion could potentially be found in its parenthetical title-- it's meant to be voiced by teenagers. We Are the Pipettes contains a few references to schooldays-- the central metaphor of "ABC", in which the girls feel cockblocked by book learning; the backstory to the cautionary bad-girl tale "Judy" (tellingly, two of the oldest songs here). But the bulk of the record is clearly about and by carefree young adults-- away from their parents' disapproving eyes, experienced enough in both love and loss that neither cuts as deeply as it once did, and enjoying feeling young and alive and free.
And while the consequences and theatricality of girl-group songs are, therefore, toned down here, so too is the music. While We Are the Pipettes often swells and soars, thanks to production from Gareth Parton (the Go! Team, Futureheads), it doesn't come near the symphonic grandeur of the best of 60s girl pop. At its best, however, these pocket-sized songs still burst with verve and vitality, mixing heart-pumping melodies with carefree, almost conversational vocals. Along with the previously issued A-sides, former flip "Because It's Not Love (But It's a Feeling)" and new tracks "Sex", "Why Did You Stay?", and the disarmingly tender and direct closer "I Love You" ensure that the group steers clear of the cul de sac of revivalism.
In the end, We Are the Pipettes is a modern indie pop album, and a classic one at that. Like the initial twee and p!o!p! kid movements, it embraces an unhip element of the past, understands that indie pop-- even in its tiny, homemade guise-- is a mix of escapist fantasy and big gestures doubling as private conversations, and is unabashedly girly. It's a welcome reclamation of indie pop as the work of bright kids with more ideas than money at a time when the genre's reigning kings, Belle and Sebastian and the Decemberists, are embracing theater-sized, 1970s-aping rock.
That the Pipettes are doing Shangri-La's impersonations on stage is almost a moot point. The necessity and charm of the Pipettes could have just as easily manifested itself had they framed their approach around replicating any other dormant indie pop totem. (Voxtrot, the Clientele, and Camera Obscura already have, respectively, shambolic jangle-pop, reverb-soaked expressionism, and Northern Soul down; the world now needs 21st century versions of yé-yé girl music and Field Mice-like acoustic pop.) Ideally, in this case the group won't get lost in the slipstream between being too pop for indie fans and too indie for pop fans, because there's a lot here for both camps to love.
-Scott Plagenhoef, July 26, 2006
Review by Anders Kaasen
Just when you thought they didn't make 'em like that anymore, Brighton's Pipettes emerge with this debut album to prove you wrong. With hooks and looks borrowed from the golden era of Phil Spector, the Pipettes, it seems, are on an admirable mission to re-establish the concept of the girl group, and there are, undoubtedly, some true gems on We Are the Pipettes: the 2006 mid-summer single "Pull Shapes" being one. With its stop-start rhythms, sparkling near-disco strings, and a lyric celebrating the bliss of dancing your cares away ("I just wanna move/I don't care what the song's about"), it gives the listener a pretty good picture of what this record is all about. "Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me" and "Dirty Mind" are also very well-executed, upbeat girl group pop songs. But the era of girl groups, of course, was just as notorious for its highly melodramatic ballads. On "A Winter's Sky," the Pipettes come close to perfecting this art as well. It stands out from the majority of the songs by being seemingly irony-free and sincere, rather downtempo, and filled with the sweet vocal harmonies bound to melt even the iciest of hearts. Not all the tracks are equally great, of course. The theme song "We Are the Pipettes" is just plain silly, and not in a good way. Although the album does drop a little in quality towards the end, there's not much filler on We Are the Pipettes; considering that this is a 14-song debut album, that's no small feat. One objection does, however, spring to mind -- why on earth did they not include "School Uniform"? -- arguably one of the most absurdly catchy and fun pop singles of the last few years. With their strictly classicist approach, the Pipettes have managed to bring the girl group concept into a new millennium. Inevitably, though, they have brought something of their own time period and personal outlook to the formula. Firstly, all-male backing musicians the Cassettes make them sound much more like a band than any of the classic girl groups, who were more often than not very studio-bound projects. Secondly, and for the better, their lyrics are in no way inextricably bound to clichéd boy/girl love themes. At times they subtly attempt social commentary, for example on the fine single "Judy," but more often they're humorously reversing the stereotypical boy/girl roles. If not particularly important, We Are the Pipettes is both witty and filled with ear-catching melodies. Recommended listening for any lover of classic, celebratory pop.
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