NEW Album Of The Year

Stop whatever it is that you're doing. Stop looking at porn. Stop downloading your pathetic mediocre music. Stop msnning with your loser friends. Your life is about to be changed for the better.

I have got together all of my Pipettes mp3s and have found out that they make up the whole album, then a bit more. And by golly, it's fantastic. It is, and you'll have to excuse the rather disgusting metaphor, quite literally, a musical wet dream. In fact, I'm convinced they've made the album just for me. Now here's the serious review a bit...

'We Are The Pipettes' has it all. The retro 50s-esque barber-shop vibe that just jumps on the biggest indie bandwagon of the last year (or kicked it off, I don't remember) is prominent throughout and leaves The Pipettes dripping in what is a heady mixture of cool, vintage and probably a bit of sweat.

I don't think lead single 'Dirty Mind' and 'One Night Stand' are supposed to be hilarious but maybe it's delivery, maybe it's the lyrics, maybe it's cliche, maybe it's the women dressed as 50s housewives singing lyrics so in-your-face and feminist that they make the Spice Girls and Shampoo look like blushing violets in comparison. Whatever it is, these songs seem to be intended to make music a little bit more fun and tongue seems to firmly lodged in cheek throughout. Put down the guitars, stop crying and fucking dance, and all that.

Songs like 'ABC' and 'Uniform', despite 'ABC's brilliant lyric "He knows about ABC 123, But he don't care about XTC!", have a vaguely school-boy-esque overtone that is either paedophilic or just tongue in cheek that no-one cares about thirtysomething nurses on a hen night copping off with school boys (there is something of a group of thirtysomething nurses about the Pipettes is there not?). 'Judy' also mentions being at school. Pop Mum's name is Judy and I keep singing this song to her and telling her she turns the boys' heads but the girls all wish she was dead. She doesn't get it. She will, in time. And I'd only just got over greeting her with 'Hey Jude' as well. Bless her.

The Pipettes, however, are blatently NOT still at school because (I've seen pictures of them) of there rather worldly view of the world and the view of school life is (due to the retro tinges) nostalgic and rather rose-tinted. Also, the Pipettes don't once mention ASBOs or how much they love Gerard Way, so it's been a while since they were at school. The school vibe can't help but bring to mind The Orchids. If you've never heard of the Orchids before, give them a google, download a few songs and you'll see that basically the Pipettes are bordering on plagarism. But teenagers don't just flirt, (apparently) and that's why songs like 'Sex' and 'I Love You' exist.

I know I've said this about Rihanna and The Kooks and Lily Allen, but I can easily see THIS being the soundtrack to the summer. Songs like 'Pull Shapes', the latest single, and 'Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me' make me want to break out the hose and have a water fight and spray lots of stinky boys (you've got a dirty mind!). The Pipettes advantage I feel is that where Luke Kook sings in a silly accent, Lily Allen borrows a ska/hip-hop sound and Rihanna verges on R&B with tinges of reggae and calypso, The Pipettes sound could only ever be British, and could only ever be now. 'We Are The Pipettes' has an underlying moral message: basically, girls should dance lots and ALL boys are smelly. This is what I've been telling my friends for years...

In a world where gay men tell women what to wear, Coleen McLoughlin is an icon, the whiffs of Girl Power linger on the new generation of university students, Craig and Rosie in Coronation Street are the new Romeo & Juliet and teenage pregnancies are at an all-time high, this is what passes for feminism. And I love it.