Monday, February 11, 2008

They Aren't The Pipettes

Full disclosure: the post title is ... uh ... borrowed. I saw it used someplace else and thought it was pretty funny.

Once I saw it I couldn't think of this post as anything else. There are a slew of bands drawing from the same well as The Pipettes. Here are three favorites.


TRALALA

A bit more guitar-centered than the other bands mentioned here, but firmly in a girl group tradition - witness the stumbling beat/handclaps on "Never Understand". I picked up the album Is That The Tralala? on emusic. Nothing I listen to religiously, but worth burning the 15 song downloads that it took. Tralala also put out that rare thing - a holiday album worth listening to. Standout track is "Christmas Never Comes". It should come as no surprise that clean female vocals are front and center on both releases.

THE MAYBELLINES

Organ! Better yet, slightly cheesy 60s pop organ! Imagine if Ray Manzarek had never fallen in with a certain crotch-obsessed third rate poet and instead formed a pop group with a solid, if sometimes a bit "girly", female vocalist. This band virtually demands that you dance. The Frug will do fine. You know the "dancing" whenever Robbie had a party on My 3 Sons? That works too.

Bonus points for actually putting FULL SONGS worth listening to on the band website. Check out "Battleship". If you don't like it delete the download. But really if that happens get yourself checked out. There's something wrong with you.

THE SCHLA LA LAS

More a "traditional" girl group than the others here, in that the vocals are handled by a group of gals. Not entirely "traditional" in choice of material though. Witness the somewhat strange cover of The Violent Femmes' "Add It Up". Or consider "1,2,3,4", which is either a tongue-in-cheek look at dance music ala "You'll Dance To Anything" or a failed experiment.

The best Schla stuff would feel mostly at home in 1963, though. I'm particularly fond of "Hot As Possible", the well-known story of "I broke up with you and now I regret it". Every vocalist in the band gets lead for a verse.

2 comments:

Eleanor Ist said...

Shame the Schla La Las split up last... September, I think it was. :(

Dave in MPLS said...

Aaaaaaargh! I did not know that. Or at least I didn't know I knew that. Kinda makes sense though.