The Pipettes. We Are The Pipettes (2007).

Gwenno, Riotbecki, and Rosay, are from Brighton, just like Electrelane, and they are signed to the UK label, Memphis Industries, as is The Go! Team, so they should feel right at home here at the Bunny Ears HQ. To make this bubbly cocktail you need a jigger of Ronettes , a dash of Shampoo , a pinch of B52s and just a sprinkle of Spice Girls.

When The Pipettes take the stage, they're brash and vivacious, flaunting a sense of humor, abundant polka dots, and sassy synchronized dance moves. They spiritually channel 60's girl-groups, exude an edgy punkishness, and they're not afraid to yell at boys and tell them to go stuff it...

Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me:

After a number of listens, it's evident that The Pipettes are not some novelty act, despite their calculated emphasis on presentation. Their songs are simply good pop, even classic pop, framed in girl-group stylings. The makeup is retro but the face has classic bone structure. Some of the tunes are quite simply superb indie pop dressed up in a nostalgic frame of reference. A great song like Tell Me What You Want could have been done by Saint Etienne, or Birdie. When they're not shouting like the B52's they can sing in bright harmony, as in A Winter's Sky, which would be a great tune done in any style.

There seems to be a trend in the UK for recycling vintage sounds (Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse), and there is an audience for that when it's done well. As with the others mentioned, there is the wink of nostalgia with an underlying heart and an earnest love for the sublime, yet succinct, pop moment musicale. For that authentic production sound, the guitars are set on the bridge pickup, there's a string section (a real one!), horns, as well as the occasional glockenspiel and Farfisa organ, and plenty of reverb on the drums. If these tunes were actually released in the 60's they couldn't help but be AM radio hits. The Pipettes were planning to come to a town near you, but their work visas got messed up and sadly, they had to cancel the first 18 of 24 dates on their US tour - que c'est tragique!! Buy the CD on Amazon for only $9.98 - at 16 tracks that's only 62 cents per track, a much better deal than downloading them on iTunes. Plus you'll be able to hold The Pipettes close to your heart, or put them under your pillow, as needed.

Au Revoir Simone. The Bird of Music (2007).

Remember Julee Cruise? David Lynch elevated Cruise to star status after using her as a singer on the soundtrack of Blue Velvet, then as a recurring lounge singer on TV series, Twin Peaks. He literally elevated her before that in his performance piece, Industrial Symphony No. 1, where she sang suspended from a harness, dozens of feet in the air. Music is very important to Lynch. He gave a big break to composer Angelo Badalamenti when he used him for Twin Peaks and several films, even casting him as a piano player in Blue Velvet, and collaborating with him as a co-songwriter. Few people other than Lynch fanatics are probably aware that he released a recording of his own music co-written with John Neff, called BlueBob, on which he plays guitar and effects.

David Lynch is now an enthusiastic fan of a trio of young women from Brooklyn, called Au Revoir Simone.



They even shared a stage with Lynch at the Barnes and Noble at Union Square last January for the "Upstairs At The Square" writers and artists series. They've played at fashion shows, had their songs placed on TV, and they're currently on tour with Air.

The girls all sing and play keyboards, but their new CD is filled out with 'cello, violin, trumpet and trombone. Wistful but not wimpy, their music is sweet and enchanting. Fallen Snow has a staccato organ part reminiscent of The Beach Boys, and the synths in I Couldn't Sleep interlock like medieval counterpoint. Even in tunes with titles as sombre as Sad Song, Dark Halls, and Night Majestic, the beats are bouncy and percolating.

They have a deft hand with harmony. The keyboard parts are composed with subtlety and they are able to shift time signatures with undistracting ease. The lyrics are personal, reflective and intimate. They sing in a straight, unemotive style.

Let's join the girls as they prepare for a fabulous dance party.
Sad Song:


Even though their their music is a bit synthetic and chilly, their visual presentations emphasize a fragile, warm and organic quality.

Fallen Snow is actually about the cold of winter, but here the girls are meeting a friend to fish for some peculiar objects on a warm summer's day.
Fallen Snow:


I can see how David Lynch would appreciate Au Revoir Simone. They present an innocence that is not simplistically naive but seems to be a premeditated construct, purposefully chosen to explore an angle of popular music that is personal and has nothing whatsoever to do with what is trendy or commercial. It's remarkable that the three individuals have worked together as a unit in creating this integrated, introspective world of delicate charm.

When is a Pop Band like a Chandelier?

In August of this year, Alice Rawsthorn, the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, reviewed the "Nebula" chandelier, designed by Joris Laarman. The piece is a blown glass replica of a cluster of old lampshades that he found when browsing in local flea markets. Rawsthorn feels this chandelier expresses what is happening in design today. She goes on to delineate its defining qualities and how they are indicative of contemporary design trends.

**************************************

The Go! Team. Thunder, Lightning, Strike (2005).

The Go! Team was originally a one-man, kitchen table electronica project by Ian Parton, which became a six-person collective of mixed race/gender for performing. The first time through this disc, the words that came to mind were "marginal," and "unlistenable." The nostalgic appeal of retro elements was not lost on me, but I thought it existed within too finite and narrow a niche to withstand anything other than novelty status. However, something undefinable about it continued to haunt my memory, making me want to revisit it again.

When I came across the article by Rawsthorn I tried to think of any music I had heard recently that fell in line with the qualities she discerned as definitive of cutting edge design. So, here is my side-by-side comparison of a chandelier and a pop band. Excerpts from Alice Rawsthorn's original article are in italics, my adaptation follows.

1. It looks familiar.

All of Laarman's designs are intended to forge an emotional bond between us and the object itself. By creating a new object from old ones Laarman triggers memories of things we remember from the past.

1. It sounds familiar.

The Go! Team does exactly this by sampling fragments of what appears to be soundtracks from tacky 1970's made-for-TV movies.

2. It looks cheap.

An equally important factor in the Nebula's fashionability is Laarman's choice of a coolly anonymous object - a cheap lampshade - as his starting point, rather than an expensive, "designerly" one. By doing so, he has created product design's equivalent of Miuccia Prada's fluffy take on the Crombie-style coats once beloved of skinheads, the 1970s British street gangs.

2. It sounds cheap.

Thunder, Lightning, Strike sounds like a mixtape salvaged from a landfill.

3. It looks like a mistake.

Asymmetrical, but harmonious though the result may be, it also looks fashionably haphazard.

3. It sounds like a mistake.

The impression is that it is an amateur's work, recorded in the red, compressed to the wall, and eq'd for the car radio of a 1971 Gremlin.

4. . . . but it isn't really.

The Nebula's idiosyncrasies give an initial impression of a naïve, almost accidental object, but if you look again, it's impossible not to notice the precision of the blown glass from which it is constructed.

4. . . . but it isn't really.

Ian Parton intended for his work to sound "dirty." When the record company said it wasn't dirty enough, he went back and made it even more corroded.

5. It looks surreal.

Surrealism is huge in design today, partly because we're bored by seeing so many things that seem neatly nice, and partly because technology is enabling designers to replicate the weird images they see spiraling across their computers in three-dimensional objects.

5. It sounds surreal.

It's not just the melange of what might be background music from children's TV shows, afterschool specials, game shows, toy commercials, and radio ads. It's the, "is it supposed to sound like this?" factor. The sound is crappy, and the vocals sound like bratty cheerleaders recorded from a distance on a portable cassette player.

6. And it looks as if it will last.

Timely though the memories, everyday references, endearing details, edgy technology and surreal styling of the Nebula may be, Laarman hopes it will also be something that we will grow to love and choose to use for many years.

6. And it looks as if it will last.

The Go! Team is only getting bigger. The album I originally thought was "unlistenable," has sold over a quarter million copies worldwide, and was nominated for the Mercury Prize in the UK. Their eventual deal with SONY allowed them to quit their day jobs and tour the world, even playing in China, as well as the major summer festivals like Lollapalooza, Glastonbury and Coachella. Their gig at the Bowery Ballroom at the end of this month is sold out. Catch them the following night in Brooklyn, before they move on to Paris, Milan, Dublin, Tokyo, and Australia.

Ian Parton can't be as old as the garbage heap LPs he samples. But, in spectacular fashion, he has channeled the sound of media as I remember it as a young teen in the early seventies. The forced optimism of commercialized teen culture, as produced and performed by studio musicians and arrangers, was full of these types of sounds. In advertisements selling everything from action toys and Barbies to bubble gum, we were bombarded by this brassy style of uptempo jingles on Saturday mornings. Parton hasn't just replicated this tinny junk, he has refashioned it as a messy, gritty version of a memory he is too young to ever actually have had, while mixing it up with early hip hop. But it brings me right back to those days like a time machine.

The conscious effort put into a project this idiosyncratic strikes me as the motivation of an artist compelled to pursue a personal vision, rather than fit into any hip, pre-formatted genre. I think it would be difficult to do this kind of work without falling into a satirical mode, but The Go! Team sound earnest and full of fun. They bring the uplifting zest and goofy ecstasy that will make you feel like you are living in a TV ad from 1972, running through a field of daisies in slow motion with your hands up in air, cheering about a new deodorant or soft drink.

Even their videos are in classic 70's, fast-food red, yellow and orange.

The Go! Team. Bottle Rocket (a song which may be in its own unique category, however it is a masterpiece of its kind):

Their new album, Proof of Youth, is, for better or worse, more professional. It's still scratchy as mohair, but they had to keep the samples to a reasonable limit due to the royalties needed for them. Parton's love of noisy guitars shows up right away and verge into, at times, his own kiddie version of Loveless. And he's become a better composer. But these songs seem created to showcase a band that must be able to put on a live show and play to a crowd, where the first album felt more of an outsider art project. It's brief at only about 36 minutes, but it comes with a bonus disc of 4 songs that are just as tacky as the others. I don't think it will be long before The Go! Team is asked to score a film, maybe the sequel to Napoleon Dynamite. Ian Parton will design T shirts to be sold exclusively at Colette, and he will eventually be asked to create a signature scent for Coty. I think it will smell like French fries and Twizzlers.

Sophie Ellis Bextor.

If adults in the US had any appreciation for real pop music, Sophie Ellis Bextor would be heard and seen all over. She doesn't care that her CDs aren't even released in this country. She's content seeing herself as pretty much exclusively a UK artist, where she sells millions of albums, and is pleased with her dedicated following on the continent. That seems to be enough for her. She was brought up in a show business family and, at 19, she was performing and recording with theaudience, a well-dressed indie pop band that specialized in snarky social sarcasm, a la Black Box Recorder. They received eight offers of record deals after their first public gig.

theaudience. I Got The Wherewithal:


Sophie has a heart for causes, as well as a discerning head for marketing. She publicly pledged her celebrity support for "Lights Out London," a campaign to turn off appliances for an hour to raise awareness of global warming, and has also posed in a grisly ad for PETA ("Here's the rest of your fur coat"). She appeared nearly nude in an ad for the fashion chain Monsoon, but turned down a video ad for Agent Provocateur, deeming it too pornographic (Kylie ended up doing it instead). She also famously turned down an offer to tour with Robbie Williams when anyone else starting out would have jumped at the chance. She just felt he was too "Las Vegas cabaret."

Sophie is serious and sophisticated, stylish but not fussy, smart, full of exuberance, glamorous but not posh. Her voice does possess a certain snooty, blue blood, la-di-da quality, but that only adds another angle to her persona. And she's a hard worker. While being a full-time mom, she wrote about 80 songs in preparation for her third CD, Trip The Light Fantastic (truly a terrible title, but there it is). She specializes in simple, uplifting tunes that have a staying power past the first few listens. She has the talent for finding just the turn of phrase that feels comfortable but fresh, which is the trick behind every good pop song. Her most appealing work has a spunky energy that lifts it above and beyond the ordinary:

Although Sophie will occasionally veer into tragic or introspective territories, she is at her best when creating the equivalent of a romantic comedy in song.  Charm is very difficult to manufacture.  The audience will spot a fake as easily as a knockoff on Canal Street.  The video for Take Me Home is a delightful pastiche of images evoking Avedon-era Harper's Bazaar.  Sophie looks like she was born to wear 1950's couture here:

Sophie's new album is available now.  It's wonderful and full of energy, and only available as an import in the States, of course.

From Between Trio. Sanctuary for Independent Media. September 15, 2007.

The From Between Trio is a collaboration of three musicians from three continents: Michael Doneda (France), on soprano and sopranino sax, Tatsuya Nakatani (Japan) on percussion, and Jack Wright (US) on alto and soprano sax. The group demonstrates an extraordinary sense of three minds working as one.

Although I sat in the front row for the view, the moment they began their first set I lowered my eyes away from the performers. I diverted my gaze because I wanted to absorb only the sound and not get caught up in its production. What they do would inaccurately be described as "free jazz," from my experience of it. And I didn't get the sense either that they are playing to serve their own self expression. In the way that a field recordist can document small sounds and subsequently amplify the audio, magnifying the details beyond what is normally audible, the trio created a type of soundscape of layered events approximating a natural environment. They create an ambiance of hissing, fizzing, scraping and rattling. Appropriate to this immersive experience, no particular player is a featured soloist at any one time.

Their first set lasted an hour, although it felt half that long, and it was the one most resembling the forces of nature. The second short set, before the break was about 18 minutes, and was more celestial, leaving more space among the parts. The last set was only about 15 minutes and the only part of the evening when the playing was a bit more aggressive, and perhaps urban.

When I wanted to examine how it was all being done, they were fascinating to watch. Of course, drummers tend to dominate one's attention because of the variety of movement necessary just to make a noise. However, Nakatani is a different type of percussionist altogether. He specializes in resonating his instruments not always by striking, but often by bowing, rubbing and vibrating them. At one point, he placed a small cymbal on the surface of his snare and lowered his face to blow through the hole in its center, resulting in a rich alto sax-like tone. He even got more than one note from it. For Nakatani, a snare isn't just a drum, it's a resonating surface to place a cymbal, a wood block, and a small bowl - all at the same time. Nakatani has lots of bowls, at least a dozen, which he tapped with tiny metal sticks. As he performed, bowls, cymbals, and even his tom tom, fell over at one time or another, sounding not unlike the style of his playing, which seems to be a series of orchestrated wabi sabi accidents. Only rarely did he simply take a stick and strike a drum.

Nakatani solo:


Doneda and Wright, the two wind players, have a repertoire of personal approaches toward their instruments. Doneda coaxed animal rasps from his sopranino, as well as modulated wind noise, and sometimes the sound of a broken tape player in fast-forward. Wright sat with his mouthpiece turned on its side so he could mute the bell of his alto with his leg. His soprano, when muted, emulated a bassoon, shortwave radio, or the chanting of the Koran. It would seem destined that these three would meet and match their talents as a trio. Each of them has played with dozens of others over the years, but together they have an extraordinary way of orchestrating intuitive sound-making.

The Blue Nile. A Walk Across The Rooftops (1984).

We have all had a moment alone, while looking out the window of a train, bus, or restaurant, caught in a state of in-between-ness, remembering the past, anticipating the future, but locked in a present where time has shut down, waiting, alone with one's memories, the only reality being the stagnant present.

At the center of every cherished moment is a kernel of failure. At the heart of every incidence of beauty is the reflection of death. Paul Buchanan is a master of recreating these liminal moments when submerged thoughts break the surface of consciousness. When he sings in "A Walk Across The Rooftops," "I am in love, I am in love with you," it's not banal, it's startling and uncomfortable.

These amazing tracks, now over 20 years old, still sound contemporary, with minimal drums, atmospheric field recordings, synthesizer, stark piano, and fretless bass. Although delicious, one should not overindulge on The Blue Nile. It's best to savor them when you have an interrupted span of time, and sink into their deep meditative spaces. You cannot immediately resume your normal pace after listening to this band. It will take a period of adjustment to come back. So, don't overdo it.

Here's an excerpt from Flags And Fences, a documentary featuring The Blue Nile's 1990 tour of the US. 1990 never looked so nostalgic. Don't miss the scenes of the WTC, and a billboard advertising Goodfellas.

Annie. Anniemal (2005).

Annie makes serious pop music. Serious on two levels. Serious in the sense that it's hardcore pop: brief, repetitive, insouciant, and ingratiating. But also serious in that some of the songs present a fragile vulnerability that is rather startling. Annie is from Norway, and although she seemed to come out of nowhere when Anniemal was released, she had already been a veteran musician, having been almost signed to a label by Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne when she was only 16, singing in a band called Suitcase. Later she DJ'd for a while before writing songs with Tore Andreas Kroknes. She had released one single, The Greatest Hit when, at age 23, Tore died from heart problems. This haunting loss is reflected in the song My Best Friend, one of the lyrically arresting tracks from her CD.

Annie has been compared to early Madonna, Bananarama, as well as both of the Minogue sisters. Her vibratoless voice is as thin and transparent as an icicle, barely breaking above a whisper, but the intonation and rhythmic subtlety of her singing is marked by razor-like precision and accuracy. Again, in the song My Best Friend, the melody of the verse is rhythmically broken into irregular divisions that would present a challenge to transcribe even for a graduate student of music theory. Another surprise in the same song is how the verse modulates from the tonic to the supertonic for the chorus. It's unconventional, but not jarring.

On a purely sonic level, the CD is peppered with all manner of brittle, clicky, percussive claptrap, squirrelly synth parts, and slippery bass. The tracks are intruded by strange sci fi hits and accents, vocorder, pitchshifted voices, and cartoonish sound effects. Not too mention Annie's deadpan, Norwegian accented, spoken word sections. Layers of this cheerful noisemaking rush by at brisk tempos. Repeated listening almost always reveals at least a few more details missed the last time through. Headphone listening is not usually a requirement for pop music, but in this case it would be recommended.

It's fizzy and cute, no doubt. Chewing Gum, which reduces boyfriend turnover to the level of chewing fresh sticks of gum, is utterly addictive, and can hold the attention of a 4-year old. Daily. For months. (I know this as a fact). It starts with an unusual arrangement of beat phrases, a group of 6 beats, followed by a group of 8, then a group of 2. The lyrics are straight out of the Shangri-las' songbook. The sound combines a big buzzy bass, a percussion part that sounds like cowbells being spun in a frontloading washing machine, and a sputtery gated synth line.



A track like Heartbeat has a propulsive throb and a cycle of chords that refreshes itself by modulating to the subdominant, but because the last chord in the verse is the dominant, and the first chord in the chorus is the VI chord in the new key, the intervallic gap between the two sections is a tritone, and that harmonic shift is a surprise every time. The lyric to Heartbeat is about going out for a drink at a party on a Friday night and dancing with a guy for whom the girl has a growing attraction, although she doesn't know his name. That's about it. However, the song has the pull of a vortex and achieves the aching ecstasy of a Mahler symphony, in just 3 minutes. Skeptical? Let's have a look:



One last thing about Heartbeat: the drum track is identical to the one in Milk Bottle Symphony by Saint Etienne on Tales From Turnpike House, released the same year. Coincidence? I think not. It's evidence of a vast, world-wide indie pop conspiracy.

Every track has something notable, and unusually creative. The gritty sounds are the perfect foil to Annie's colorless soprano. The more introspective tunes like No Easy Love are never sappy, but have a boppy, funky groove that offset the heartbreaking lyrics.

Annie told Prefix Magazine last year, she would like to be remembered "as a songwriter and hopefully a good songwriter and just a woman that's making good music. As long as they think that, I'm happy." We already do, so you can be a happy little poplette! Annie will have a new album out by the end of this year.