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Don’t hold their iPod commercial against them. While “Shut Up and Let Me Go” launched this Salford twosome into the stratosphere, there’s more to the Ting Tings than pirouetting silhouettes. “Shut Up” leans heavily on a ‘70s disco groove filtered through Franz Ferdinand, and on the face of it, it’s atypical of the band’s sound. The bulk of We Started Nothing is almost skeletal pop, rooted in heavy beats and percussion (Jules De Martino is the drummer; Katie White is the singer and guitarist; both hit samplers with a spare hand, stick, or foot), and simple melody lines on guitar or keyboard. But as Prince sagely observed, there is joy in repetition. The Ting Tings’ essentialist songwriting makes no bones about repeating the chorus 50 times (on the addictive “That’s Not My Name”) or riding the beat like a DJ would mine a break. In the pair’s punky attack and 808-style beats is a Mancunian ethic of rhythm über alles – as the set opener, “Great DJ,” reminds you 50 times, it’s “the drums…the drums…the drums...the drums.” Glimpses in their sound of New Order, Siouxsie Sioux, and Bow Wow Wow might give the Ting Tings some courant retro-cachet, but White and De Martino seem old enough to have witnessed such things firsthand, or at least filtered through an older sibling. Is it too much to see authenticity in a flavor-of-the-month pop band? Perhaps. But great summer anthems like these can make you believe any-ting’s possible.
Condition:NEW. Drilled case
TRACK LISTINGS
1 Great DJ 3:23
2 That's Not My Name 5:11
3 Fruit Machine 2:54
4 Traffic Light 2:59
5 Shut Up and Let Me Go 2:52
6 Keep Your Head 3:23
7 Be the One 2:58
8 We Walk 4:04
9 Impacilla Carpisung 3:41
10 We Started Nothing 6:22
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