Currently languishing in a wardrobe somewhere are a rail of polka dot prom dresses that represent a brief period when a kitsch girl group from Brighton took over the world.

“I wore the same dress for years,” laughs Gwenno Saunders, the Welsh pub singer who was recruited to The Pipettes just as fame found them and ended up singing on their biggest hit, Pull Shapes. “God, I was relieved to get out of it!”

Formed in 2003 in The Basketmaker’s Arms in Gloucester Road, The Pipettes were “an experiment in self-manufactured pop”, formed by musician/producer Monster Bobby with the idea of reviving the Phil Spector sound, but with a modern twist.

“Moving to Brighton changed my life,” Gwenno admits. “I’d seen The Pipettes play live and I thought, ‘This is how pop music should be.’ I’d been in Wales singing in pubs where nobody listened or cared and I joined this band in Brighton and everything started happening.”

It’s now been four years since the release of the band’s debut album We Are The Pipettes and the line-up has changed almost beyond recognition – “no bodies under the floorboards, no dramas, just the usual churn in pop bands,” according to their press blurb.

Gone are Joe Lean (who left to find his Jing Jang Jong), Rose Dougall and RiotBecki and in their place are Gwenno’s fashion designer sister Ani and Brighton rock royalty Alex White, of The Electric Soft Parade and Brakes. “Our purpose remains the same though,” says Gwenno, “we just want to make the best pop music we possibly can. We’ve still got the same sense of fun but we’re not as gimmicky or brash.”

If their first record was characterised by those polka dot prom dresses, second album Earth Vs The Pipettes (which comes out on Fortuna Pop on June 28) is a spangly pair of hotpants.

“We’ve definitely moved towards a dancier feel, but it happened quite naturally. It just evolved into this disco album and then we met Martin Rushent [veteran producer of The Stranglers, Shirley Bassey and, most famously, the Human League’s Dare] and he really wanted it to be a disco album too, so it all came together. We’ve made this music and it’s slightly ridiculous but we’re really, really proud of it”

There’s a B-movie, sci-fi feel to it that’s evident in the title and in brilliantly camp tracks such as Our Love Was Saved by Spacemen.

“Bobby comes up with all these theories and gets obsessed by different cultural things. He’d written this essay about space disco pop ages ago and it sort of came from that.”

It’s a loose theme though and, as Gwenno points out, songs like single Stop The Music are rather more meaningful. She thinks the band have always struggled with a “slightly contradictory” nature.

Despite their colourful, throwaway stylings, “we’re actually very serious about making pop music. We know what we do has quite a disposable element to it but that doesn’t mean we should be written off. If you think about a lot of older Kylie stuff, it was easy to dismiss at the time but people are still dancing to it now.”

The group are clearly reluctant to see themselves pegged as any sort of novelty act again. “The initial conceit of The Pipettes was to get people together to make this very specialised girl group pop and there were a lot of constraints with that – it was quite disciplined and not massively natural. We’ve got a bit more freedom now.”

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