Auf Wiedersehen Pipette
Published 28 months ago
Ex-Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall swaps the polka dot three-piece for “a grown up vision of solo ecstasy”.
- Text by Hynam Kendal
It wasn’t exactly Sugababes or Destiny’s Child-sized
media coverage of the band reformation of The Pipettes in 2008. Whereas
Heidi and Amelle of Sugababes fame had lad mags heralding their
newfound pop status (though more attention was paid on the length of
their legs than the size of their lungs), and Michelle took to the
background behind Beyonce and Kelly like the other myriad dropouts
never would, allowing for column inches to dote on Ms Knowles’ newfound
status as Queen DC, Rose Elinor Dougall’s, shall we say,
chart-redundancy cheque never really ruffled many feathers.
It’s a shame because The Pipettes were notably one of the best outfits
of the last decade. Pull Shapes was said to be the aforementioned Ms
Knowles song of choice at a birthday bash not even two years ago (how
incestuous do these pop circles get?), and debut album We Are The
Pipettes had a string of amazingly catchy intelligent pop hits that
sounded as inoffensively superfluous as granny’s Long Plays, with
biting lyrics that wouldn’t seem out of place from the likes of
Catherine Tate-lite Lily Allen. “I like a boy in uniform, school
uniform…” early demo, surprisingly entitled, I Like a Boy in Uniform
(School Uniform) sang, cutting the perfect line between cheeky
sugar-coated sex-fest and innocent plonky-tonk radio fair. There were
others, Judy, Dirty Mind, Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me, all heralding
this new intelligent “adult pop” movement, and though a dreary
placement of #43 in the British Charts didn’t exactly mean Rolexes and
stretch black cabs for all, it was a respectable following. Though not
purely on their own, The Pipettes, and mentor Monster Bobby,
reinvigorated the pop scene when they travelled the clubs in trademark
polka dot floozy dresses, rhyming about the trials and tribulations of
horny girls, written in collaboration with singer and poet Julia
Clark-Lowes, who was inspired by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty's The Manual - I bet such highbrow inspirations weren’t in place when Britney was aligning Breakout’s tracks.
But enough about The Pipettes. That’s not why we’re here. Not really.
Announced in April 2008, Rose quit the band after four years as a
founder member. She decided that she “Didn't have any more to offer to
the group” and announced through Pitchfork.com that she was putting
together a solo record. That’s why we’re here: “Another Version Of Pop
Song” released on limited edition 7” through Scarlett records.
Though not a million miles away from The Pipettes' signature
pop-with-a-twist sound that harked back to the wireless falsetto warble
and classical instrument accompaniment of wartime fare, Rose's foray
into grown-up music is definitive look-at-me, clever
falsetto-with-a-beat. And though before she was more than happy to sing
about being a bit tipsy or wanting to shag an ex-lover, now she’s moved
onto a deeper plateaux. She’s a big girl now don’t you know. Just look
at her new influences: gone are Fuzzbox, 60s handclaps, The Ronnettes
and The Shangri-Las, now she sounds like, and offers gentle
accreditation to, Broadcast, Penguin Café Orchestra and The Silver
Apples. She even travels with serious music’s bedfellows Film School
and British Sea Power. Wowsa.
Asked what inspired her new single, Rose says, "After being in The
Pipettes, which was very much based around the idea of writing 'pop'
songs, I was thinking about how those processes and ideas related to my
own personal song writing now, being outside of that structure, and
this is something that came out of that time. I suppose it is about the
first couple of weeks that you meet someone you are interested in being
around, not believing in forever but enjoying the experience all the
same. I would hope for it to induce complete unadulterated ecstasy." I
aside a likening to the modern salt-of-the-earth potty mouths that
dominate the British Charts at the minute - by trying to evolve and
change her sound and appear ‘different’ hasn‘t she, in fact, fallen
into pop’s latest love affair: gobby perma-accented lyrical witticisms
on a breakneck beat? “Don't you dare tell me it reminds you of Kate
Nash, ‘cos I'll stab your eyes out!" she says.
Rose Elinor Dougall‘s debut single Another Version Of Pop Song is on
limited release December 8 with a full album in Summer 2009.
