It’s the beginning of the gig season, our first one this year was off to see The Pipettes at Cockpit in Leeds. It had been moved from Leeds Uni (presumably owing to lack of ticket sales) however the venue was packed.
We got there in the middle of the first support act, Monster Bobby. He sorta reminded me of John Shuttleworth, if Mr Shuttleworth had a drum machine and a guitar. Nicky wasn’t mad keen but I liked him enough to buy a copy of his single (7″ vinyl! How many people would have a deck to play that on?).
Second support act was a nice surprise: Stefy have been touted in the UK quite a bit, and I didn’t click it was them until I heard their latest single ‘Chelsea’. I’ve had the pleasure of listening to some of their other stuff thanks to imported audio, but their album isn’t on sale in the UK for another week yet so we haven’t managed to lay hands on a copy. That said, I bet they’re ace when they’re headlining so we’ll make a date when they’re up North in the UK – might be a while tho, they’re US-based.
And so to the Pipettes, who (presumably backed by The Cassettes) launched into a repertoire of pretty much their entire album, interspersed with a substantial amount of new material leaving us hoping that a new album is on the way. This gig was only the third in the current tour which will see them crossing the Atlantic and there were a few rough edges, however this only really served to show that they’re not up their own arses; it was pretty good to see the inter-band banter making you feel you’d just joined a party they were a part of, rather than simply watching. In any case each Pipettes song isn’t much over 3 minutes in length, so you tend to get swept away in the momentum.
Of course there were people dancing – how couldn’t there be? From wagging fingers of Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me through to the cramped posing of Pull Shapes the crowd bounced, not insanely but politely. The girls frequently swapped places to dance, and you got the feeling not all of it was choreographed. All told they were on-stage for about an hour.
Despite the poor sound quality in the Cockpit, we left feeling buzzy with the obligatory t-shirt (and a copy of Monster Bobby’s vinyl single).