By Chris DeMento
The Pipettes are a UK trio with a Supremes-meets-indie-rock popgirl sexgimmick on a North American tour come two years too late. They wear polka-dot skirts. They are hot. They dance about. They are very sexy. They sing about boys in school uniforms and dance about. They are female vocalists. Let us coordinate our dance in the old-new popstyles and dance the old-new popstyles about very much: www.thepipettes.co.uk, read the “about” page.
On paper, Bimbo’s 365 Club and the Pipettes (Oct. 29) are a decent match. One would think the girls’ bubbly, decadent act should awaken the joint’s muffy ballroom character, bring it out in (retro)fits. Dances with schizoid eyes and dated names, long cigarettes, alcoholism – I saw none of this stuff. What I did see was a priced-to-move vortex of !Fun Brand! unfun that looked like a lot of hard work and sounded mediocre at best, an embarrassing pratfall of a noisewelter. All they wanted to do between numbers was bitch at the soundperson, which only served to draw attention to the unfortunate thin of their overproduced sound. If you want to be heard, just sing louder, ladies.
There is room for escapism in popular music. People need to be moved, taken for the proverbial ride out and away from themselves, given over to suspension of disbelief, even. But at a certain point one needs to separate meaningful escapist art from driveling, crackerjack ridicule and shameless branding, especially when the latter start taking themselves too seriously. “We are the Pipettes” was one of the songs they did – it’s also an album title. The Monkeys, hey, hey, people said they monkeyed around. People also said they sucked ass. People don’t want to be goofy surf-movie extras. Not the smart ones, anyway, not anymore. Sorry to be a killjoy.