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| When you think about it, pop music is quite a lot like denim. “What’s that?” I hear you cry, aghast. “Pop music’s not a bit like denim. They don’t even fall into the same goddamn general categories. You better have some pretty good reasoning to back up such an outlandish proposition, bitch.” Well, I do. It is twofold. |
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First, both pop music and jeans have been consistent staples of popular culture since the 1950s. Second, while both are all over the bloody place, it’s surprisingly difficult to find good examples of either. It was somehow fitting, then, that the Pipettes first came to my attention while gloomily browsing the rails of Topman (which is – let’s face it – my main source of new music these days), on a futile search for a pair of jeans in my size which weren’t horrendous, when the shop was suddenly filled by the joyous retrotastic indie-pop sound of debut single ‘Dirty Mind’. The primary reason for the visit ended, as it so often does, in resounding failure; but I went home and Googled the lyrics to the song (warning: typing “dirty mind” into a search engine throws up all manner of filth), whereupon I discovered that it was the work of three ladies trading as the Pipettes, and their “backing band” the Cassettes; and that – as is now common knowledge – the Pipettes wear a lot of polka-dot clothing, and sensibly recognise that the ‘60s girl groups like the Supremes and the Crystals were better than the Beatles.
Cut to whatever year this is, and the Pipettes have finally released their long-awaited (by me, and probably their record label and their mums) LP, We Are The Pipettes and, thankfully, it don’t disappoint. It kicks off in fine style with the self-aggrandising anthem of the title track (“We are the Pipettes, and we’ve got no regrets – if you haven’t noticed yet, we’re the prettiest girls you’ve ever met”) before launching into recent single ‘Pull Shapes’, which I reviewed only a couple of weeks ago so shan’t say anything further about here, except to say it’s probably the highlight of the album, not to mention the year. ‘Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me’ is here too, which has grown on me no end since I reviewed it on its release as a single (I seem to be carving out some kind of niche for myself as TinyVoices’ Pipettes correspondent), as is a quite unnecessarily re-recorded version of the still-excellent ‘Dirty Mind’, a tale of a young man with unnervingly high standards of hygiene but who turns out to have “ideas that would make the devil scream”.
The new songs on the album for the most part conform to this template of ‘60s-referencing, but modern-sounding, pop songs about dancing and pulling. Highlights include ‘It Hurts To See You Dance So Well’ and ‘One Night Stand’: “I don’t need you, I don’t want you; if you think that this is cruel then you should see what my friends do”. We’ll overlook the missing hyphen in the title.
Inevitably, spreading itself as it does over 14 tracks (which admittedly only come to 33 minutes in total), the album isn’t as perfect as we might hope it to be. ‘A Winter’s Sky’ and ‘Tell Me What You Want’, in particular, don’t really go anywhere, and only served to make me wonder why more interesting-sounding Pipettes b-sides (like ‘Guess Who Ran Off With The Milkman?’ and ‘I Like A Boy In Uniform (School Uniform)’) had been omitted.
But finding faults seems somehow churlish. The Pipettes are one of the most interesting and wonderful bands of the hour, and everyone should rush out and buy this album before they are appropriated by the style supplements. |
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| Mat Beal - 9/10 |
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Name:
Tom
| Date:
20/07/06 | Reply
I watched them at Latitude last week and they were good - contrary to what I'd been told before. The drummer rocks like a bad man.
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Name:
Andy
| Date:
24/07/06 | Reply
Love this album, excellent review! Had me stumped for a while with the denim reference, but it was explained well, and I have also heard them in topman! Small world.
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Name:
lapula
| Date:
17/09/06 | Reply
Un-smokable music!!!
Far away from me!!!!! Please!!!
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