By Karen Aney (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 28, 2012
For reasons that readers of South Asian descent are likely to understand, I’ve spent a long time avoiding The Ting Tings. For the rest of you – yes, it’s what you’re thinking it is. However, The Ting Tings (giggle) just released their newest album, Sounds from Nowheresville, so I decided to open up (my mind) and let it in (my ears).
First, some quick background: The Ting Tings are an English duo, Katie White and Jules de Martino. They both spent time in other musical groups before breaking off and working together, spurred by a mutual distrust and dislike for the recording industry. They have a few wide-spread hits, including “That’s Not My Name,” which is one of those catchy tunes that everyone sings along to without actually knowing the words.
The album is receiving wide-spread praise. For some reason, the collective music industry seems to have turned itself into an overexcited puppy dog and wet itself over how innovative this album is. Here’s a secret for you, readers: it’s not. The praise is derived from the fact that the music encapsulates so many genres: pop, electronic, bluesy-folky-chimey dance, and more. The album truly does play like someone’s iTunes playlist set to random. The problem is that The Ting Tings’ style isn’t necessarily suited to every incarnation it’s forcefully shoved into on the album.
It opens with “Silence,” which sounds like a cross between a track on a zombie movie playlist and something you’d hear in a multi-coloured tent while smoking from a hookah and oiling your dreads. The effect is intriguing and slightly hypnotic; the slow beat sets a gentle ground upon which the duo layers multiple guitar effects. The lyrics and the melody they follow are slightly repetitive (if you’re looking for a great drinking game, take a shot). This adds to the hypnotic feel, and as it’s the first track of the album, isn’t entirely obnoxious. Yet.
The album’s second track is called “Hit Me Down Sonny,” and opens with little drummer boy-esque snare rolls. These are eventually layered with White’s voice and some percussive instrument – it sounds like bells, but more brassy. This could suggest a few things, but likely just means they used an old set of chimes or bells in the basement of the club in Berlin where the album was recorded. On this track, the vocals are perhaps best described as anthem-like: there’s an angry, perhaps intense overtone to her voice, and it’s really more of a speech than a song.
The third track, the album’s single “Hang it Up,” is incredibly similar; the two songs are virtually indiscernible before you’ve subconsciously memorized the melodies, unless you can remember that track two has the chimes and track three has the stereotypical guitar. Both songs start off interestingly enough (if you haven’t just listened to the other track), but end up being noisy and repetitive (there’s your second shot).
By the time the album reaches the fifth track, “Give it Up,” it’s fallen into a trap that White says they both wanted to avoid; in an interview with Digital Spy, she explained: “We were in Berlin where there is a great electro scene, and so we made songs like that, but quickly realised that everything on the radio was Euro-pop shite. We didn’t want our record to be tarnished with that brush.” After this realization, the duo cut half the songs on the album. Apparently, they weren’t critical enough, as the fifth, sixth and seventh tracks are destined to be put out to pasture with all the rest of the, well, Euro-pop shite in the world. They’re over-produced, over-auto-tuned, and completely repetitive (third shot).
The album changes incredibly abruptly with the eighth track, “Day By Day.” This is where the auto-tuned clouds part and we realize that Katie White can actually sing (so why the auto tuning and voice effects in the first seven tracks?). This song is lovely – acoustic guitar, a simple and melodic voice, and simple lyrics. It’s a recipe for success, and the artists are completely unrecognizable as those who performed the previous tracks. Also, despite the chorus reciting the song’s title eight thousand times (fourth shot), the lyrics aren’t too repetitive.
The album’s final track, “In Your Life,” is likely the shining star. It’s an interesting counterpart to the first track, embodying the same hypnotic feel, but this time using sparse broken chords on the guitar, an un-treated voice, and some eerily sad violin. Now this review is getting repetitive (fifth shot?), but it’s completely different from the other tracks. This is the strength the music industry seems to be obsessing over, but is it really a strength?
Our generation has fairly ubiquitous access to personal music devices. We can make our own random playlists, or we can let creepy computer programmers decide one for us. The question is, then, why a group or artist would feel the need to do this themselves. It’s wonderful that they’re expressing themselves artistically, but this album lacks the coherency that makes it worth a buy. For those of you with deep pockets, maybe you should go out and buy it; support what could be a new horizon in the music industry. For the rest of us, preview the songs individually on iTunes and buy what you actually like – because you probably won’t like it all.
