Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 17/07/06
Label: Memphis Industries

There's nowt so knowing as a Brighton trendy in a vintage '50s frock. And the debut album from much-vaunted, polka-dotted threesome Becki, Gwenno and Rose and their male backing band - who met at a beach party three years ago and became subject of an A&R frenzy shortly afterwards - reeks with knowingness.

Feeding the Shangri-Las through a Girls Aloud filter, these three-minute heroines are all '60s girl group beats and tics updated with the odd "Get out of my face"-type line and delivered in voices that would never have made it past Phil Spector's receptionist back in the day. On the whole, it's cute. From the opening title track, an all-guns-blazing manifesto ("If you haven't noticed yet / We are the prettiest girls you've ever met"), onwards, it offers technicolor (but not too technicolour) bubblegum (but not too bubblegum) japes in every doo-langing bar.

Especially enjoyable are self-consciously goofy "Pull Shapes" a handclappy Marvellettes-style ode to different styles of dancing; "Why Did You Stay?"'s ripply Del Shannon stylings; "Dirty Mind"'s echoes of Maxine Nightingale's 1975 hit "Get Right Back Where We Started From"; "It Hurts To See You Dance So Well" - a sort of morning-after "I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor"; "Sex"'s blatant "Be My Baby" drums; and "ABC" about a geeky quarry who "knows about ABC, 123, XYZ / But he don't know about XTC".

Trouble is, despite the band's concerted efforts to beef up and broaden their schtick with a radio-friendly production, too many aspects scream "novelty act" (two words: Strawberry Switchblade). For a start, give or take a few great lines ("If you think this is cruel / You should see what my friends do"), a chance is missed here to say something truly interesting about girls, love and pop. In short: the lyrics are not as funny or clever as you'd expect. "Kissed" is rhymed with "beats my heart missed" - and worse. Stories of female derring-do don't finish with the flourish they promise, they just end...as though someone's biro's run out.

But harder to forgive than all this is the too-cool, too-crisp air of studied nonchalance hard at work here. Sixties girl groups made you feel they'd literally die if Bobby didn't ask them to the prom; The Pipettes make it abundantly clear they'd literally die if anyone thought they were as sad as Darlene Love. While this is mildly funny the first time (a prim-looking girl group singing about one night stands!), their oh-so-glib tone grates considerably by the fourteenth. The early lyric "Give us your soul and we'll can it" kinda sums this album up. It's so cynical it makes Lily Allen sound like Edith Piaf.

    by Anna Britten