The Ting Tings are a band that I had heard in passing and disregarded as annoying, but listening to the album it’s actually a lot of fun and I have totally rethunk my perception of them. Although they are still a bit annoying.
It’s simple, and nothing particularly new, but they are unashamed of doing something that’s fun and a bit stupid, but still has integrity.
Lead singer, Katie White sounds like she’s been educated to the age of 11, and then let loose in a theme park and made to write music. She also sounds like she can’t really form words properly and that the time she’s singing the words is the first time she’s seen them, but it’s an innocence you can’t really dislike, but at the same time, you don’t want to have to deal with it all the time.
It’s like when you’re looking after someone elses child and they’re chatting all the time and you humour the kid, and it’s okay, but if you actually had to deal with it all the time, it would get old, fast.
There is a sufficient level of diversity in the album, to keep your attention from one song to the next, and although the surface moves around throughout the album, it retains the foundations of the music throughout.
The best songs on the album are in the first half. They are catchy and fun and amusing, but ultimately annoying. Whereas the last part of the album is tedious and lazy, but not as annoying.
Listen to this album: Pogoing in quicksand.
Rating: 76%
Extracts from ‘That’s not my name’, ‘Fruit Machine’ and ‘We started nothing’
This is a dance version of calligraphy. It’s swirly and curly and appealing at first glance, but when you try to read it, you can’t really see what the content is. The album is a rather pleasant sounding experience, for the most part and I very much enjoyed it while I was listening to it, but once the album had finished, I felt rather empty inside, like there wasn’t any point to what I’d just heard. There isn’t any conviction to the music. Dance music is supposed to capture you and whisk you away, but this album doesn’t do that.
I was personally rather indifferent to Moby until I saw him on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and thought he was hilarious. This caused me to take rather a liking to the man, but I still stayed indifferent to his music.
This album is like the weak kid at school who keeps trying to be everyone’s friend, but nobody wants anything to do with him, even though he is generally pleasant, he’s not friend material and it’s the same with this album, the songs are nice but they don’t really make me want to buy the album.
The best songs on the album take a step in the right direction and make me wish the rest of the album had the same determination as these songs.
There’s only one outstandingly bad song on the album, and that is ‘Everyday it’s 1989′ which is just too much for me to handle, it has some wailing woman all the way through and I just want her to just SHUT UP!
The best songs on the album are ‘257.zero’, ‘Alice’ and ‘The Stars’ which all combine decent beats, cool funky sounds and some great use of words.
Like being put in a blender that’s been hooked up to blend in time with the music.
This, I think is probably the best album to come out this year, so far. It is utterly fantastic. I had a couple of this week’s releases on my mp3 player, on shuffle and ‘Crank it up’ came on and I immediately went back to the start of the album and played it through. There aren’t many albums that I’ll listen to on the way home and be rushing home just so I can write about it.
It’s like a hardcore mix of Dizzee Rascal and Mindless Self Indulgence. It has a real sense of dynamism that really draws you into the music. The mixture distorted simplistic drum patterns to the synth and the guitar, all overlain by a very skilled lyricist who’s not afraid to be loud, this is a very talented band that deserves your support.
This album, brilliant as it is, is not without fault. The songs ‘Mr Misfortune’ is a real thorn in the foot of this album, really being a let down to itself. It’s like the kid at school who’s rubbish at everything and nobody really wants to work with it, so it ends up working with the teacher.
The song, ‘Wait for you’ start off as though it could be Mr Misfortune’s best friend, but drags itself out of the pit of despair. It’s just that it’s a much slower song and in relation to the other songs, it seems really out of place, but on the second listen, you expect it more and it comes as less of a shock to the system, letting you enjoy the merits of the song, rather than compare it to the others.
This band are one of those that you can tell that their live performance is going to be awesome by listening to the album, and as I got home today, I immediately checked out their tour dated to see if they were playing close to me, and they are. So I am happy.
Listen to this album: In a dirty hole in the ground in the middle of a city.
