The Pipettes: More than theeveryday

Tue 20th Nov, 2007 in Features

The Pipettes have a theory: people are sick of hearing songs about everyday life. Music shouldn’t be about the mundane nature of our everyday existence – it should act as an escape, alleviating the boredom and dullness of the world in favour of the glory and sheer vibrancy of a glorious pop song.

Perhaps it’s why their debut – We Are the Pipettes – is so gloriously up-tempo and effortlessly catchy, with the album’s original release in the United Kingdom a year ago greeted with ecstatic praise for its interpretation of classic three-piece girl-group pop from the 1960s. Now the album has been expanded and extrapolated upon for release in Australia, the United States and elsewhere, complete with a new mix from Greg Wells, who has built quite a name for himself on the back of recording Mika’s breakthrough album.

“We haven’t changed it a huge amount,” claims Gwen, despite the album having been remixed and a few new tracks being added as well. “We’d worked with him on a couple of tracks and it was just interesting to see what the album was like if it was going to be worked on by someone else – especially with the album coming out a year later. We didn’t want to release the same album, but instead to put some effort into [releasing it again].”

Having the opportunity to go back and re-examine your debut album so close to its original release is a benefit that few acts receive. It can work in several ways though – a band can over-think it, and change too much (which Gwen indicates is not something the band wanted to do), or they can get it just right, ironing out some of the creases that they can now hear. “Sometimes things don’t need to be there,” she says of the remixing process, “but then you realise that that’s what gives it character, and I think Greg brought out a lot of sounds that were on there but you couldn’t hear – the weird effects and strange noises.”

Gwen says that, for her, the album is little different now as to what it was like when it came out, save for the fact that it now sounds better. “There was a lot of conversations about how we wanted it to sound,” she says in the lead-up to the re-release, “and certainly with things like the drum sounds we wanted to keep that as close to what it was, but at the same time we wanted to make it a lot more coherent. It’s been an interesting process, and I can’t tell you which version I prefer really.”

The cover is markedly different – where the UK pressings found the group with the polka dot dresses on a grey (silver) background, the new edition is bright and vibrantly yellow. “I think that’s an improvement,” she says in her Welsh lilt, “and we were really pleased with that – it was someone from our forum who did that. We had all these designs and they were really rubbish. We just asked the forum and it looks really good.”

The reason for the re-release is obvious – where the debut was released on indie label Memphis Industries in the UK (also home to the Go! Team, Dungen, and others), for the Stateside release the band are now part of Cherrytree Records, a quasi-indie offshoot of major Interscope, which the likes of Feist, Rooney and Australian trio the Grates call home.

“Nothing has changed except that our record has been put in places that our indie label couldn’t [get it to],” she says. “I think that was an important thing about where we were – we made sure that it’s covered all bases of where we are and what we do.”

The Pipettes set out with a manifesto when they made We Are the Pipettes – formed by member Monster Bobby in 2003, they wanted to revive the classic Phil Spector pop sound, but add a modern twist. The band’s founder has already unleashed a solo debut, and Gwen is currently working on one of her own. With the manifesto of the Pipettes well and truly established – and as such a way of writing songs already pre-determined – working on her own material is, she explains, a very different process of creation.

“When you write for the Pipettes you have to write for a girl group – it’s a manifesto in itself of pop songs. It can’t be self-reflective, and it’s not to say that pop songs can’t have a heart and soul. But there’s this real trend of telling people about your day in a pop song and it’s just really, really dull.”

As such, the Pipettes have struck out against that – instead their aim is to deliver something timeless. “Pop music was becoming about four-piece guitar bands and it’s all self-indulgent and really quite boring,” she states. “We want to put the fun back in pop, and have a good time with it – they’re the songs you can hear on a Saturday night.”

We Are the Pipettes is out now, with the band landing here for the Falls Festival in the New Year and a subsequent set of sideshows…

Click Here to view our Falls full coverage