Green Tee Readings

I got back from The Pipettes show at the Double Door a couple hours ago, and in between working with a couple pictures (and those were the only two that turned out at all well, unless you like looking at the backs of heads) and making Strawberry Pretzel Salad (caution: contains small amounts of actual fruit) for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving festivities, this is the first chance to do a little blogtastic review.

The short review: The Pipettes are a lot of fun, and they can all really sing. You can do far worse with cotton candy pop than them.

The longer review: The Double Door is a venue I don’t really like, for it’s far too narrow for it’s length, giving the audience an extremely narrow viewing area and the performers little room to move about the stage. The show was fun, but I think it could have been a lot better in different place (he Park West, perhaps, or the Metro).

Their stage patter didn’t fall entirely flat (and nowhere near as flat as the horrific patter by The Beta Band when they opened for Radiohead), but the combination of less than ideal venue and a crowd with too many hipsters and hipster wannabees led their calls for people to dance, kiss and generally frolic about with abandon to be mostly ignored. This was especially noticeable because their opening act, Monster Bobby was charmingly Brittish, even if his music wasn’t spectacular (side note: his voice had me wondering if he would be better off in a Red House Painters cover band. I did a double-take during one of his songs, having to make sure he hadn’t lifted the vocal progression from “Grace Cathedral Park”).

Their actual performance was very good, if constrained to a by-the-numbers live reproduction of their studio work. RiotBecki had by far the most energy of the three and is tied with Rosay (who appeared at times to be slightly in her own little world) as my favourite Pipette. Gwenno seemed to focused on making sure her moves had polish to entirely get into the music and fun.

They played the five songs currently on my phone (Because It’s Not Love, Dirty Mind, Judy, One Night Stand and Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me), so I was well satisfied there, and they sang, danced and cavorted about the stage for a bit over an hour, which considering their album runs just over half an hour is pretty impressive.

The only thing I regret, other than the dull crowd, was that I didn’t go with anyone. That, however, is far more a function of not deciding on whether I was going to go until I bought a ticket about 1:00 on Tuesday morning.

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