On their first album in four years, once-polka-dotted Brit gal group the Pipettes are now a duo-plus-musicians; two of the three original singers are gone. Sonically, they've replaced theoretical Phil Spector with theoretical astro-disco, most explicitly in "Our Love Was Saved By Spacemen." But old New Wave producer Martin Rushent actually provides his own patented Eighties Wall of Sound — burbling pop-funk bass lines, Hi-NRG Eurosynths, Latin bongos, tricky Anglican harmonies. The voices can't equal, say, Bananarama's depth of feeling. But in tracks like "Captain Rhythm" — which partly suggests "Da Doo Ron Ron" on Jupiter — the Pipettes still ride the dance beat like a rocket ship.

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“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”