Londonist loves The Pipettes, and who wouldn’t? With their smart, Spector-influenced, indie-pop and fifties/sixties school prom aestheic, fused with a healthy modern cynicism, you'd have to be quite wrong in the brains not to love them.
What is a surprising, though is how quickly they’ve done it. In less than six months, they’ve gone from playing moderately-sized student unions, to packing out a large London venue as indie-pop darlings of the moment. And if we’re honest, it shows just a little. They’re the hot
thing right now, and making the most of it, but you can tell they’re not entirely used to venue where the audience don’t have the room to move like their songs demand, or a gig where half the audience only respond to the singles, because that’s all they really know – there was a bit
more urging the audience to move then there needed to be early on, which had them looking a little uncertain of themselves when they really, really don’t need to be...
Was it a bad gig? Not by any stretch – the girls delivered the uptempo pop wit that their records promise and looked marvellous in their new polka-dot dresses and if it took them a little longer than normal to get the audience fully on side, well, they did it in the end, judging by the
roof-raising cheers for the encore. One suspects they just need a little time to adjust to their well-deserved new status, that’s all.
If you missed them, well, they’re still bloody fantastic, and you should catch them next time round. At this rate, they’ll be playing Wembley some time early next year, and you’ll be surrounded by people saying “yeah, I saw them when...”
Alasdair Watson
