You Made My Heart Go Boom

The Pipettes @ Highline Ballroom 6/5/2007
Don’t Forget Me / Because It’s Not Love (But It’s A Feeling) / Why Did You Stay? / Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me / Your Love For Me / It Hurts To See You Dance So Well / Tell Me What You Want / Baby Don’t Leave Me / Really That Bad / The Burning Ambition Of Early Diuretics / True Love Waits Patiently For A Miracle / I Love You / Guess Who Ran Off With The Milkman? / By My Side / Judy / One Night Stand / Dirty Mind / Pull Shapes // ABC / We Are The Pipettes

The Pipettes “One Night Stand” – My God, they are so pretty and charming! It seems ridiculous to have to say that about the Pipettes of all people, but it sorta needs to be underlined. In the live show, the songs are the songs — wonderfully catchy, impeccably crafted, almost always witty but also sometimes quite moving — but the entertainment value comes from the girls’ charisma and sense of humor. They played a rather large number of new songs which were fine enough on first listen but didn’t seem to match up to the effervescent perkiness of their best numbers, which were mostly played straight in a row at the end of the gig. “One Night Stand” and “Dirty Mind” were highlights in particular, but of course I’d say that — those are probably always going to be my favorite Pipettes songs. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Marit Bergman was also on the bill. She was backed up by a miniature chorus of female singers, one of whom was Nina Persson from the Cardigans. Marit writes extremely literal and straightforward lyrics, but has a funny habit of explaining her songs before playing them. This can lead to awkward situations when she gets a bit more poetic in her language and you’re standing there waiting for her to sing something like “I am a 20 year old girl who has been raped by three Swedish hockey players” after she has announced that the song is about a 20 year old girl who was raped by three Swedish hockey players. Her introduction to her final song was rather inspired, however. She explained that she wrote it for Kylie Minogue, and that when she came up with the lyrics, she thought about the first two words that came to mind when she thought of her music — “sex” and “gay” — and so she wrote a song about gay sex on Chelsea Piers. Of course!

Smoosh played between Marit and the Pipettes’ sets. The most wonderful moment of their show came when they brought out an even younger sister who played a bass guitar that was taller than her body about as well as Adam Clayton from U2. Smoosh’ music generally falls into the category of “amiable mediocrity,” but when you consider the fact that most people twice their age struggle to write and play as well as they can at their age, they totally deserve respect and support. If I were one of those Smoosh girls, I’d end every show by saying “We’re, like, twelve or something, and you just got SMOOSHED!”

Elsewhere: Erik Bryan on Bruce Springsteen, Teenage Fanclub, Lou Reed, and Jimi Hendrix.