The Pipettes

It’s an unenviable position to be in when all eyes are firmly on the headliners peering out from venue posters and uttered incessantly from everyone’s lips. It’s even worse when your music is no match for the joyful pop and playful dance-ability that will follow.

Y'see, where *The Pipettes *are harmless flirtatious fun, *The Hot Puppies *are all woozy seduction, frontlady Becky Newman enticing you in through honey-thick drawls and microphone-clinging shuffles. Yet it’s their youthful timidity, static stage presence and the fact they all look like students at a university end-of-year concert that perhaps works against them, their minds seemingly on things such as their sociology dissertation rather than crafting innovative indie-pop. It’s an alluring combination sure, but not enough to grab this writer’s balls. Which he likes.

As luck would have it the other support band apparently forgot to turn up tonight, so we’re left with an agonisingly long wait before The Pipettes take to the stage. When they do emerge, eyes sparkling, skipping over to their starting positions with smiles as wide as the stage, you know the wait has been worth it. Harking back to a time pre-Beatles when a flick of an eyelash or nifty hip-swing could leave a young gent with permanent heart palpitations, these are the pretty girl-next-doors doo-wopping to the radio with dance moves choreographed in front of the bedroom mirror. Everyday girls as attainable as they are approachable.

But while this spells innocence and high-school crush naïvety, their child-like chirrups are far from unadulterated, the barbed _‘One Night Stand’ _or bluntly titled _‘Sex’ _suggesting these girls aren’t made entirely of sugar and spice.

Alternating positions on stage, eyes glancing at each other whilst clicking their fingers to the beat, their moves appear strenuously rehearsed. Songs urgently follow one another, and it’s only after a full 20 minutes that they take time to actually converse _with the crowd. Once they do, and the ‘Marry Me Becky’ signs start to come out together with giggle-rousing _“I want your babies” chants, and only then do they actually look like they’re breaking through the ‘routine’ to enjoy themselves.

It’s a fun sight to watch as they gradually make their way through pretty much every track on their debut album. The few new ones they casually throw in suggest the next album will maintain the level of innovation evident on the first, but it’s the actual live sound tonight that could do with some improvement. So much attention has been given to the pretty young things at the front of the stage that it appears the sound guy has completely forgotten about the band at the back, the music sounding dry and frustratingly flat. Similarly, a few synthesized strings from the keyboards would’ve made the songs bloom beautifully, especially given the soaring production on CD.

At the end of the show we’re invited to stick around and dance with them until the curfew, but something inside of me decides it’s best not to meet them. Like that pretty girl in school I never got round to asking out, let alone speak to, sometimes it's best to keep a little distance, and the stage is perhaps where The Pipettes best belong: dancing, twisting, shimmying around in matching polka-dot frocks and heart-meltingly cute smiles. Real life is never that good.