Sometimes the best way to create something new and fresh is to look to the past and try to bring it back from the dead. It seems that almost all music is in some way looking 20 years earlier for it's style and sound. The Pipettes however are looking even further back for their inspiration; back to when Phil Spector was not just a guy with crazy hair who may or may not have shot a b-movie actress, but when he was producing some of the greatest all female pop acts the world has ever heard.
We Are The Pipettes is the product of the girl group and their backing band "The Cassette" having spent far to long listening to Spector's greatest hits before creating this fun irreverent album. Okay, it may get off to a dodgy start with the frankly passable "We are The Pipettes", but once you skip that the rest of the album is track after track of pure unadulterated pop goodness.
It's the mark of the band that they can craft songs like "Pull Shapes," "Dirty Mind," and "Your Kisses are Wasted on Me" on their debut album. All three are perfect three-minute pop songs that stand the band away from everything else in the overly convoluted pop genre and give the band a real presence amongst bands like The Sugababes, who churn out the same song over and over again. All three songs wouldn't be out of place both on the Radio 1 play list and as the dance floor filler at a wedding.
Admittedly, this is not an album that will change your life; but the songs will stick in your head for days at a time and the album certainly does stand up to repeat listens, which in the mass market, love 'em and forget them industry is a very rare and impressive thing. Even "Judy," which is a pretty different subject from the rest of the album, is filled with fantastic harmonies and a killer hook that again you'll find yourself tapping your foot along to.
The band have created an album of knowingly pop singles that is probably the only out and out pop album that is a must have so far this year and unless there is a Girls Aloud release in the next four months, I don't see that changing. Yes this is not strictly an original sound, but by today's standards it certainly comes across that way and oh boy is it refreshing.
