Debut album from Salford. Manchester's Indie Pop duo, championed as 'the band to watch in 2008' by the UK music press including the NME. The Ting Tings are the Pop explosion made up of Jules De Martino and Katie White. The duo have teased and tantalized during the latter months of 2007 by releasing extremely limited singles and playing very few headline shows. The duly deposited buzz has built steadily to launch one of the most exciting British Indie-Pop acts to emerge from these shores in years. 10 tracks including the single 'That's Not My Name'. Columbia. 2008. *Only available in the U.S. on vinyl!
Amazon.co.uk
The debut album by Salford's The Ting Tings comes hot on the heels of their No.1 single "That's Not My Name", a nugget of pop gold that comes on like a genetic splicing of Toni Basil's "Micky" and The Knack's "My Sharona". The bulk of We Started Nothing follows a similar formula, navigating a path between the smart, angular indie of CSS, Bonde Do Role, et al and the pop mainstream. Here and there, they pull it off perfectly: the stutter-rap of "Fruit Machine" sees vocalist Katie White leading on some poor sap with sultry charisma and lip-gloss sass, while the excellent "Shut Up and Let Me Go" is snappy dance-punk in the spirit of Blondie's "Rapture" or Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love". Elsewhere, they branch out with mixed results. "We Walk" builds from quiet flourishes of piano into a surprisingly steely manifesto: "Smash the rest up/Burn it down/Put us in the corner cause we're into ideas", sneers White. Rather less good is "Traffic Light", a light, jazzy number that employs a number of somewhat forced driving metaphors to describe a relationship hit the skids. Still, it's a debut with promise, and a string of good singles is nothing to be sniffed at. -–Louis Pattison
