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music are not so much retro as they are post-retro, the product of an age in which progression in pop music has all but been replaced by cultivation and fusion.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.
