The Pipettes Melt the Hearts of Skeptical Friends

photos by Doug Hollingworth

When I grow up, I want to be a backup singer. After having seen Rose, Gwenno, Becki -AKA The Pipettes- with backing band the Cassettes on Friday night, I was very very tempted to write this entire review in backup singer-ese: lots of “ba-ba-bas” and “ooooh-weee-oohs” and “shalalas”, some enthusiastic handclaps thrown in during a rousing hand jive. But it just would not have been as sweet, slick and entertaining as it was when the polka-dotted Pipettes sang and harmonized what must have been something like 2000 pop songs at Petit Campus. Now that’s 2000 songs, with as many choreographies, and elaborate ones to boot, to match with the lovely lovely harmonies that melted my skeptical friends’ hearts.

The Pipettes want us to remember when pop songs lasted less than 4 minutes, when teenagers were concerned with two things: dancing and love. But that’s not to say that they’re stuck in the local malt shoppe sipping sodas through shared straws, saccharine and naïve. Nope. They have sass, wagging their fingers at the crowd, biting their lips, shaking their heads, frowning, scolding, and singing that we “have to understand…he’s just very good with his hands”. At times emulating the more conservative Angels, sometimes channeling the more fierce and badass Shangri-las, I think I liked them best when they reminded me of the Shirelles…romantic, fierce, but with an audible fragility. Each of the Pipettes brought her own voice to the dance party (Becki: sassy, Blondie-style; Gwenna: sultrysultrysultry; Rose: warming like 93% chocolate), like a delightful and smart incarnation of the Spice Girls, but for sexy librarians, art history majors, and shy girls who secretly want to be backup singers when they grow up.

Doug Hollingworth is no longer skeptical

The Pipettes Encore

The Pipettes Crowd at Campus