headlessparrot's Full Review: We Are the Pipettes by The Pipettes
There’s a semi-obscure critical theory – the author of which I can’t immediately recall – that argues for the reading of pulp fiction (most notably the Harlequin series) by women as an act of feminist subversion. The thinking, if I recall correctly, goes more or less as follows. Housewives are reading these books at a time when they would otherwise be engaging in the activities that define a traditional, un-transcendent reality for a woman, and which effectively limit them: doing laundry, cleaning the house, caring for children, and so on. And this is, in some small way (however subtle), an act of rebellion and a victory for feminism. The only problem with this theory – and, if I recall correctly, the author freely admits it – is that this act of rebellion is not merely limited, but effectively annulled by the fact that this romance literature ultimately just reinforces a set of decidedly un-feminist ideals that the minute act of rebellion strives to undermine. What this all means, then, is somewhat unclear. It’s difficult to argue that housewives are knowingly subverting the system from within, and it seems only marginally more likely that the producers of these cultural artefacts are knowingly using subversion to buttress paternal hegemony. But whatever the case, the theory does serve to illustrate that even within dominant cultural institutions, there is room – however diminutive - for a kind of intellectual sedition.
All of this has everything and nothing to do with the We Are The Pipettes, the 2006/2007 full-length debut by Brighton-based girl group the Pipettes, whose music reads like a thesis in women’s studies: a quasi-feminist interpretation of 1960s girl groups and the Phil Spector Wall of Sound (think the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”); one that operates within the conventions of a decidedly un-feminist genre and attempting to subvert it from within. An “experiment in manufactured pop” conceived of by singer-songwriter-promoter Monster Bobby, the trio – Rose (“Rosay”), Becki (“RiotBecki”), and Gwenno, accompanied by a shadowy cabal of male backing musicians known as the Cassettes – are never seen in public without their matching polka dot dresses; they sing three-part doo wop vocal harmonies over immaculately produced pop instrumentation, and the Cassettes refuse all interview requests, ostensibly to maintain attention on the attractive young vocalists. The catch, they claim, is that they’ve manufactured themselves. Sharing songwriting credits as a band, the Pipettes engage in a risque lyrical repartee that’s – at times – surprisingly transgressive.
Sure, a song where (gasp!) the girl actually asks the boy to dance (“Pull Shapes”) seems mostly innocuous, but when couched in an understanding of the girl-group narrative – pretty girls who sing pretty songs that are divorced from any sense of subjectivity – it becomes, like the act of reading a Harlequin romance novel, a subtle rebellion. And that’s just one of We Are The Pipettes' more innocent moments. Elsewhere, the trio are even bolder in their defiance of gender roles – “One Night Stand” is about exactly what you might expect it to be about, but with the female as the aggressor (using a pick-up line – “So I walked up to you and said, ‘Baby, did it hurt when you fell from Heaven’” – and dusting her hands of the matter – “I left you alone, at 4 in the morning / Not a stitch to wear, because you ignored my warning”), while “We Are The Pipettes” brashly boasts “We are the prettiest girls you’ve ever met.” “Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me” is a surprisingly blunt in telling a broken-hearted suitor “I’m going back out to chase some other guy / Who I might like,” and it’s abundantly clear that the chorus of “ABC” – “He knows about ABC, 123, XYZ, he don’t care about XTC” – isn’t a reference to Andy Partridge. And all of this is ignoring maybe the album’s single most eye-raising line: “He’s always got his head… in a book,” which clearly demonstrates that Rose, Becki, and Gwenno are striving to make a statement. In fact, We Are The Pipettes’ overarching thematic concern might be most succinctly articulated as “it’s not love – but it’ll do.”
But all of this circles back to the ‘everything and nothing’ comparison to the romance novel theory. Because while part of me recognizes that there really does seem to be something compellingly subversive about the Pipettes’ shtick (Becki, it’s worth noting, is a media studies graduate whose dissertation was on seventies hardcore pornography), another part can’t help but return to the ultimate futility of the romance novels and ask what’s actually being accomplished here. For all their subversiveness, the Pipettes are – at the end of the day – still functioning within an anachronistic, arguably sexist realm that serves to objectify them (doubters need only read a handful of slobbering reviews to see that this is true). Of course, it’s possible that the trio are entirely comfortable with being obscure indie sex symbols, but that’s sort of beside the point. By operating within the girl-group framework and subverting it as they do, are the Pipettes ultimately just granting it an aura of legitimacy that it would otherwise lack? I'm not sure that I can answer that question. But we can’t forget, after all, that it was Monster Bobby – not the vocalists themselves – who penned “Push Shapes,” presumably driven by a “Gee, wouldn’t that be cute” sensibility in regard to the reversed gender roles. Let’s be clear, here: there’s nothing strictly wrong with the girl groups of yesteryear – many of them were wonderful, and the genre holds up remarkably well in spite of the relative disposability of some of its material – but the paternal attitude that spawned these kinds of acts is one that probably doesn’t deserve to be legitimized, if it actually is being legitimized. Not that this is all, in the end, a catastrophic problem, given that the Pipettes are (arguably) the only group currently operating within the constraints of the genre - and, I suppose, it all provides a brilliant sense of perspective on the girl-group phenomenon as a whole.
There’s also the distinct possibility that I’m taking the Pipettes far too seriously as a theoretical exercise. I say this because, experiments aside, We Are The Pipettes is – mostly – a fucking brilliant pop record, one that forestalls any discussion of theory by virtue of just how pretty it is, and one which would qualify perfectly as a “guilty pleasure” if the entire idea of guilty pleasures wasn’t an inane construction to begin with. It’s tempting to say something pseudo-profound here like, say, “the battlefield of contemporary popular music is littered with carcasses of bands (or albums, or songs) built upon great ideas that couldn’t write a tune to save their careers.” But after careful consideration, I’m not so sure that this is the case. Aside from the relative dearth of great ideas, it occurs to me that those who do have them are inevitably also those who know how to follow through. And the Pipettes, whatever we think of their creative genesis, are no exception. As We Are The Pipettes unfurls, all of the feminist subversion just sort of falls away, and an intellectual exercise becomes a purely aesthetic one: the interweaving vocal harmonies, the symphonic swells, the Wall of Sound tributes (multiple electric and acoustic instruments in unison, create a densely layered, reverb-heavy sound), the exuberant hand-claps, and the infectious enthusiasm – even the careful sub-three minute song lengths – are like the scientifically determined ingredients of a transcendent pop album (thus lending a much appreciated secondary significance to the group’s lab equipment-derived moniker).
Ignoring the title track, a mostly forgettable sci-fi roll call-cum-introduction to three sassy vocalists, I’m not sure that there’s a moment on We Are The Pipettes that qualifies as anything less than simply breathtaking. Given that the record is barely thirty minutes long, and only one song clocks in at over three minutes (and even it does so hesitantly), maybe that’s not so surprising. But the highlights still abound. “Pull Shapes” is an exuberant doo wop-meets-disco celebration of dance, sung by Gwenno but propelled by hand-claps and the dramatically slashing strings that underpin the gorgeous three-part harmony. And from this point on, it’s essentially more of the same. I might have a problem with this uniformity of style if it weren’t so damn gorgeous, or if it didn’t all, in the end, mesh so perfectly with their stated sonic experiment.
“Why Did You Stay” is built upon a framework of surf-guitar and Beach Boys-harmonies, with the narrator asking in the chorus “Why did you stay / When I treated you that way?” – a question it seems, that is usually directed with genders reversed. Becki, meanwhile, sings verses on the drum heavy “Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me,” buoyed by Gwenno’s breathy, reverb-soaked refrain. “Because It’s Not Love (But It’s Still A Feeling)” continues the gender transgression in what is We Are The Pipettes’ most authentic girl-group anthem – gaudily layered strings, walking bassline, traded vocal lines, and orchestra bells, its chorus initiated by the joyous yelp “Don’t stop!” The aforementioned “One Night Stand” warns in a sing-song squeal, “If you think that this is cruel / Then you should see what my friends do.”
“A Winter’s Sky” is the album’s most sincere moment, a perfectly melodramatic ballad that’s both pretty and affecting, fuelled by its barrage of ooohs, aaahs, doop-dee-doop-dee-doo-doos, and the careful unity of its three-part harmony. But “I Love You,” the album’s closer, is also its most surprising, a string-heavy, sub-two minute song whose surprisingly sweet mea culpe (“I’m sure you recognize I’m a stupid dummy always / But I love you”) is a perfect conclusion to the record, adding a very sincere human texture to its otherwise playful narratives, and adding an interesting wrinkle to the detached raunchiness of “Sex,” “Because It’s Not Love” and “One Night Stand.” The American version of We Are The Pipettes effectively ruins this perfectly encapsulating moment by tacking on two bonus tracks (“Dance and Boogie” and “Baby, Just Be Yourself”) that impede the freight train momentum of an otherwise remarkable – and remarkably concise –album. But I’m willing to forgive these transgressions because, in some weird way, I suppose they’re consistent the output of a band that’s concerned primarily with subversion in whatever form it takes.
I won’t go so far as to say that We Are The Pipettes perfectly recreates either the girl-group appeal or Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, but it certainly does an admirable job in paying tribute to both, resulting in a magnificent recorded artefact so finely polished that you can see your smile in it (one which actually does – like Spector’s work – immerse the listener in what songwriter Jeff Barry calls a “quasi-Wagnerian mass of sound”). Unfortunately (and this is a transgression that I’m less willing to forgive), Greg Wells’ remix of We Are The Pipettes for American audiences (the album lingered on shelves in the UK for a year before it was picked up for US distribution in 2007) emphasizes the album’s vocal parts, suppressing the instrumentation in a curious rejection of Spector’s compulsive (and wonderful) tendency of “burying the lead.” This production decision is especially baffling given that the Pipettes’ debt to the Wall of Sound is not just the by-product of his lingering influence, but rather an explicit tribute to his production technique. Why, in other words, should the sound engineers downplay it, especially on the second time around? This is not to say that the American version of We Are The Pipettes is definitively neutered (it’s still quite great); it’s just worth mentioning. And, of course, the elegant solution to this problem – one that also solves the bonus track conundrum – is simply to buy the UK import.
In addition to the Wall of Sound, Phil Spector was perhaps best known as an avowed proponent of singles over albums, describing LPs as “two hits and ten pieces of junk.” This may explain why We Are The Pipettes does feel – barring the final “I Love You,” which perfectly ties it all together – a bit like a collection of singles rather than a record. Then again, I don’t have a problem with this in the least, both because a) they’d all be remarkably strong singles, and b) it’s perfectly in line with the girl-group ethos they’ve adopted. Aside from a shaky album opener, I’m not sure that there’s a stumble on We Are The Pipettes, even divorced from its “what do I make of this?” quasi-feminist context. And maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for hand-claps, multi-part harmonies, and soaring strings, but the more I listen to We Are The Pipettes, the more I’m convinced that one weak song doesn’t make it any less than a perfect pop recording.
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