It’s We are the Pipettes by The Pipettes. Absolutely, completely, and utterly phenomenal. I guarantee that you won’t be able to escape the hype around this record when it comes out in July, because it’s just an enormous, wonderful record that’s unparalleled in pure, sugary pop perfection.
Their whole schtick is that they’re a Phil Spector-ish Girl Group throwback, but updated and british and cute and punky. It might be seen like a gimmick, and it certainly is, but…
OMFG, the hooks. Absolutely unparalleled hooks - I mean, this record makes the New Pornographers and Magnetic Fields sound like the Doors by comparison. The thing plays like a singles compilation of the best sixties pop band you’ve ever heard, but it’s merely their debut album.
The guys lurking in the background (playing the instruments, writing the songs) have obviously done their homework, and this is just one hell of a slab of killer pop music.
It’s out in July, but check out the myspace page - www.myspace.com/thepipettes for some of the finer tracks. Astonishingly hot.
Just bumping this thread because the OP, VCO3, referred to it in a Pit thread he started yesterday. Please don’t lock it, mods, as discussion could still be relevant. Somehow I missed this thread last summer, but I just discovered the Pipettes recently myself, and they are as wonderful as the OP said. Three super-hot, cute British chicks who are paying perfect homage to the Shirelles, the Shangri-Las, the Ronnettes, the Chiffons, and all those other girl groups of the early '60s. Here is their official website with plenty of streaming song samples:
I knew it was only a matter of time before they started to catch on here. I tend to be pretty ahead-of-the-curve on stuff like this.
The show was amazing - they were about twice as tight as any of the Youtube clips that you may see (most of those from almost 2 years ago!), and they played everything from We are the Pipettes except for “a winter’s sky.” They also played what was easily an entire new album’s worth of songs that haven’t been released yet, which were equally awesome.
So I stopped by their Seattle show last night…and I gotta say, they bored the living snot out of me. Good players, tight performance, but it really just didn’t do anything for me. I find myself agreeing with the following comment:
I kept thinking that it would be a lot better if the attractive young female singers were replaced by large burly homosexual men camping it up. (Seriously, I adore Purty Mouth, which is Seattle’s gayest country band.) Having the girls do the performance straightfaced introduced one of those Showgirls “Is this discourse or metadiscourse? Do I appreciate it or just hate it?..err, I think I’ll go with ‘hate it’” dilemmas.
That being said, a lot of people in the audience looooved them, so YMMV.
Interestingly, I finally saw Smoosh for the first time when they opened the show (I’ve been aware of them for years, but due to scheduling weirdness never actually got a chance to see them). Smoosh is, I think, best approached as outsider music–they started the band when they were 9 and 12 years old, and I think they’re now high-school age. The songs are surprisingly well-written, but the girls aren’t mature enough as performers to do justice to their own material. It would be interesting to see what Smoosh covers done by people like Elliott Smith, the Transmissionary Six, or Big Business would be like.
Colour me semi-impressed. I’ve had their CD for several months and, while I find much of their stuff catchy, it has the feel of a short-lived novelty act. A retro-Spice Girls.
As far as self-conciously retro-60’s, English girl group acts go, I’d rather listen to Amy Winehouse.
I absolutely love the Raveonettes. They’re one of my favorite new bands of the last ten years, just because I love that retro sound so much. I’ve missed two opportunities to see them live over the years, but really want to catch them at some point.
I’ve been wanting their album for a while. I probably should have looked for it last time I went to a record store.
I’ll have to remember to look for it some more.
At first listen it sounds like Broadway meets Euro-trash…not necessarily a bad thing if you want to dance at a Gay disco, but nothing to write home about.
Huh. One of the music blogs I read had some of their tracks so I downloaded a couple a few days ago. They’re decidedly not what I’m looking for in a group fronted by a woman/women; OTOH the blog didn’t mention their gimick, so it came as a surprise. I can readily see how they’d appeal to some listeners. Just not me.
Smoosh, on the other hand, I dig. But it’s even better when they join others for Head Like A Kite. As “supergroups” go HLAK is one of the few I’ve ever liked. The girls do the vocals on the “Noisy at The Circus” track, ftr.
I don’t want to turn into big nerd defending his tastes, but it seems like most of you are completely misunderstanding the band. More than anything, threads like this reaffirm that most people lack a legitimate critical vocabulary with which to talk about art or media, as in the Pollock threads.
Frankly, to compare this band to Amy Winehouse or Camera Obscure as though they “do the same thing” is baffling to me.
Oh, please. Lack of critical vocabulary, whatever. I’ve consistently been a fan of your music posts, VCO3, and I think you know what you’re talking about, so don’t take this the wrong way - but I have to challenge you further here? What’s baffling to you about my characterization of the Pipettes? They are trying to capture, as you said, the early Phil Spector-style sound - the early pre-Beatles, Motown-esque-but-not-as-explicitly-black, girl group featuring vocal harmonies, a wall of sound style, and certain common drumbeats and chords. In my opinion, they do a mediocre job of aping the style; it sounds kind of inauthentic, and I don’t like inauthentic homages to vintage styles. The vocals, for one - I don’t think they’re that good. They fail to capture the “wall of sound” feel - the layers of sound feel, I don’t know, fake, too modern and slick, not coming together properly. The bass and guitar playing sounds overly clean and soulless. They rely on similar riffs and string lines in most of the songs on that Myspace page.
Camera Obscura, on the other hand - listen to their song If Looks Could Kill. Actually, you’ve probably heard it already, but listen to it again. THAT song gets the Spector style perfectly. All the layers just fit together better and don’t sound so modern and slick. Great bass line, and the rhythm and lead guitars flutter mysteriously in the background rather than assaulting you like the Pipettes. Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken gets that same strings sound that lots of the Pipettes songs go for like in ABC (and has almost exactly the same beat as ABC also) but it sounds smoother, less grating, to me. And the lyrics are cheesy. “He don’t know about XTC.” I’m surprised you actually think this is the “best album of the year.” I KNOW you have better musical taste than that.
My final verdict? The Pipettes are a gimmick group.
So, apparently, nobody else knows what “pull shapes” means. I feel better about being out of that loop. I thought either “it’s something new, and I don’t know it because I’m obsolete,” or “it’s something I should have remembered from the 60s.” It turns out I’m just about as unhip as everybody. It is strangely reassuring. :rolleyes:
Hey, Argent, I hope you know that that wasn’t directed at you per se; it was more directed at people saying stuff like, “It sounds like Broadway!” or comparing it to the Spice Girls (!?!).
I don’t think that the band is trying to specifically be a “tribute act” or a straight-up recreation of the Spector thing - there’s an 808 kick and clap on the “I like to hip hop” part of “Pull Shapes!” I think that they’re trying to be a straight-up '07 indie pop band that sort of does a “girl group” pastiche, complete with a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge. It’s not an homage or tribute as much as a cultural mash-up or hacking - the songs are decidedly '07, complete with current references and vocal styles and so on. One of the girls even calls herself “Riot Becki,” a wink and a nod to the whole early nineties riott grrl movement. I guess I just don’t think they’re trying to “be” a girl group as much as riff on the idea of “girl group,” if that makes sense, down to the guys in the backing band (like Monster Bobby, who wrote all of the songs and already has his own solo career) playing with their backs to the audience, all “take no notice of that man behind the curtain.”
<i>Let’s get out of this country</i> was probably my number two or three pop record of last year, so I’m well-familiarized with it. I just don’t think there’s a comparison between the two groups. If anything Camera Obscura are pulling a sort of c86 revival type thing, and any similarities or Spectorisms on their part are just the natural ones that anyone doing retro pop will invariably stumble into (see all of the spring reverb, “and then he kissed me” drum patterns, and faux-Carol Kaye bass on that recent Shins record!)
I absolutely reject the idea that the Pipettes are a gimmick group or novelty group, mostly on the basis that the songs are so amazing. Listen to “its hurts to see you dance so well” or “pull shapes” - two of the most ridiculously perfect pop moments of the past decade. I mean, those songs make the New Pornographers and the Magnetic Fields sound like freaking Bauhaus by comparison - pure pop perfection with some of the sweetest hooks I’ve ever heard.
