When Pop and Indie collide (We Started Nothing - Ting Tings)

Member Name: Susanna75

Product:	We Started Nothing - Ting Tings
Date:	24/04/09 (104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Straight and to the point of shiny tunes to sing along to

Disadvantages: A weak finish

The union of Pop and Indie is a fraught and shady undertaking, full of angst and uncertainties. Will Pop's bright and brash forwardness scare Indie off? Will Indie's scruffy nonchalance repel Pop? Will Pop be smart enough? Can Indie be pretty enough? Quite frankly, it's generally a liaison best avoided at all costs.

Except, occasionally, these underhand rendezvous can produce marvellous offspring - shiny, scruffy, smart and pretty things. The Ting Tings are one such entity. Two individuals by the names of Jules and Katie who hail from Greater Manchester and between them apparently play all the instruments on this album. But that's quite enough dry facts - what are the tunes like?

Pretty damn great, actually. "Great DJ" opens it with some classic indie-strumming guitar. The verses are sparse - just bass, drums and bleeps to begin - and even though the chorus consists entirely of the phrases "ah ah ah ah", "eee eee eee eee" and "the drums" repeated over and over and over, it's eminently singalongable. You will undoubtedly be familiar with "That's Not My Name", the humongously massive number one with its groovy drum and handclap beat and chorus that, depending upon where you stand in the Pop Wars, either drives you absolutely insane or had you leaping about and singing along and pondering dragging out your old Transvision Vamp records for a spin.

"Fruit Machine" features the obvious sound effects of jangling cash and slot machine noises, and reminds me both of "These Boots Were Made For Walking" and "Walk Like An Egyptian". It's a jaunty tune with flutey noises underlying the chorus of "kching kching boy!" and a surfin' style guitar solo. "Traffic Light" is a surprising diversion from all this strident indie-pop, being a laidback tune with extremely girly vocals advising you not to "be a traffic light", to which you can only reply "okay then, I won't". With dainty strings and a meanderingly cheerful guitar line, it's very sweet and happy tune. It's followed by "Shut Up And Let Me Go", probably my personal favourite song of last year, with its extremely catchy riff, angry spoken vocals, insistent bass, huge stomping chorus and Katie's excellently timed "hey!"s.

"Keep Your Head" drives along with non stop shouty vocals from Katie overlapping plinky guitars. "Be The One" has the signature monotonous bass signature of classic indie, and is a pretty, singalong tune. But it's "We Walk" that takes the album down a sombre side alley, with solemn piano chords and more insistent "ah ah ah"s. It's a dark tune, with largely spoken vocals and spooky synth sounds in the background. "Nothing makes you feel good" sings Katie in the bleak, layered middle section, before the piano riff breaks back in with determined graveness.

"Impacila Carpisung" is just bass, some bubbly noises and muffled, overlapping vocals singing complete nonsense. It's a flimsy but strangely infectious song which will swirl annoyingly round your head for days on end. Finally "We Started Nothing" consists of very little apart from a simple guitar riff and some quite irritating high pitched vocals. It's very repetitive, despite attempts to inject some variety by dragging in a brass section at the end, and a weak end to an otherwise great album.

I tend to like my pop straight and to the point, and albums divided into ten portions of pop in roughly three minute servings are always going to get extra points for me just for Doing It Right. "We Started Nothing" is a fabulously shiny little trinket of an album, a little rough round the edges but worth treasuring whether you stand on the Pop or Indie side of the fence.

Summary: Tings that make you go 'hooray!'