I am decidedly torn on the Ting Tings album, their debut album We Started Nothing is by no means their first attempt to break into the pop world. Katie White the female ‘ting’, has tried her luck before with girl group TKO but was painfully rejected. Her second attempt was part of the three piece ensemble that was Dear Eskiimo, a group that also had the other ‘ting’ Jules De Martino but once again they were kicked to the curb.
Someone up there in executive music land must have been smiling, no grinning down on these two, for they refused to lie down, the heavy artillery that Columbia records pulled out for these two was more than impressive, Mike Pickering and the US super heavy weight producer Rick Rubin came together and were able to persuade the duo that they had something that no other pop band on any shore had to offer. To be fair they were right, you throw in some Bjork style catchy annoyance, add a pinch, no throw in a bucket load of subliminal repetition and the pot that is the Ting Tings has started to bubble. The recipe is far from over, some random lyrics that despite all reasoning are still able to penetrate your mind’s enjoyment sphere and you find your shoulder twitching, at this point all is nearly lost, the Ting Ting’s revolution is close to completion.
As the CD spins away in your machine, you find you want to join in, you want to scream at the thinking part of you that is trying to reel you away from the edge of reason after all in which lyrical world is a verse starting and ending with “don’t you be a traffic light” followed by one that does the same with “don’t you be a round-a-bout” considered good music, when the lines between barely amount to audio fluff? And yet, I repeat and yet, your feet are shuffling and doing a slide that is reminiscent to a toddler trying to avoid a puddle because even your muscle fibres are refusing to adhere to your conscious commands. Herein lies the genius of the Ting Tings, their music is an abolition of reason, it’s a return to the simplistic days of early teen-dom, where music was about jumping around your bedroom while thrashing your head in all directions.
To attempt to dissect this album using conventional literary mediums, after all they have inserted the lyrics on the album sleeve will leave you with nothing but question marks and a vacuous region where substance should reside. It’s quite simply pop, it grows on you like bacteria on cheese, the flip side of bacteria is when its properties are harnessed you get Yakult the friendly bacteria that does your stomach a host of good! Can the same be said of your senses, unfortunately yes, or fortunately so if you’ve shelled out the £8 odd pounds for the musical coaster as despite the annoyingly repetitive nature of every song on the album it does force you to crack a smile and send you back to a simpler time when all things were settled with a bag of sweets and a marble.
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Monday, 25th August 2008 at 7:11 pm BST
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