 | Overall Rating: 8.2 Lyrics: 7.2 Melodies: 9.2 Arrangements: 8.4 Thematicity: 8.2 Originality: 7.3 Production: 8.8 |
First things first: yes, the Pipettes' nearly self-titled debut is fluff, but it's exceptionally addictive fluff. I'd love to be able to invoke self-irony to justify the trio's 1960's girl-group pastiche, but let's face it, there is the intelligent kind of self-irony which makes Art Brut and Bamboon hilarious and then there's the kind that offers no real social commentary, functions equally as self-commodification, and treads a bit too close to kitsch to be taken seriously, and The Pipettes' brand falls into the latter category. Still, as tempting as it would be to write them off as a milinarian-friendly incarnation of the Spice Girls or a sign that indie music has finally lost its last shred of credibility, there are several things about this band that just can't be ignored: they write insanely catchy songs, they arrange them well, and they got a fine sound engineer to capture them in a way that both fits their unapologetically retro idiom and brings out the best from their vocal harmonies and periodesque instrumentation. It would be better to say that the Pipettes are what the Spice Girls should have been but weren't, and while I'm not going to waste time trying to play apologist for what I consider a guilty pleasure, I do want to emphasize that this is one of the highest-quality guilty pleasure recordings I've ever heard -- perhaps the best since Duran Duran's Rio -- and that there's a deceptive amount of real artistry behind The Pipettes' individually wrapped morsels of candy pop.
Like the Ikea product it aspires to be, We Are the Pipettes is a deft blend of streamlined product fetishism and marketing finesse. To draw the listener in, the band has placed the silliest, most self-ironic composition at the beginning of their record (featuring the immortal line "if you haven't noticed yet, we're the prettiest girls you've ever met") and followed it up with the lyrically insipid but insanely addictive "Pull Shapes," which is destined for an impressive ranking on my list of the year's greatest singles. There are plenty more great songs on this record, including "Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me," "Why Did You Stay," "Tell Me What You Want," and, well, pretty much every track on the record. For those interested in and appreciative of the subtleties of the band's self-marketing ability, there are plenty of tidbits at which to marvel. Take, for example, "ABC," whose lyrical premise (intellectuals can't understand women and hate sex) is so trite and politically regressive that the song should by all rights fail spectacularly, but which recieves a slightly different bent (one of begrudging fascination) by the elliptical line "He's the kind of guy who..." at the end of the bridge and by the sincerely self-deprecating "I'm more stupid than the others" that occurs halfway through the following song. For those whose appreciation is rooted more in musical complexity, there are the well-placed string and glockenspiel trills on "Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me" to fall for, and plenty of artful piano licks, but the real enjoyment is to be found in RiotBecki, Gwenno, and Rosay's vocal harmonies, which form the basis of the record and display both exquisite integration and a great deal of individual flair. Again, there's nothing in any of these songs that will change music or inspire you to think in a different way (or really at all), but while it's pure bubblegum, We Are the Pipettes represents the acme of bubblegum. It is an unabashed and almost completely vapid product of consumer culture, yet it cand be dismissed, as there's way too much merit in too many places to sweep under the rug. I can't claim that this is one of the year's best records, but I think it possible that it may end up being the one that spends the most time in my stereo.
-BT
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