We Started Nothing

Buzz-propelled Salford tag-team The Ting Tings exploded out of the traps last December courtesy of a tingle-inducing turn on the BBC’s Later...With Jools Holland. Squeezed between such makeweights as Bjork and Paul McCartney, Katie White (vocals, guitar, lip-curled pout) and Jules de Martino (stubble, drums, shoegaze loops) lit up the show with a taut, tart reading of ‘That’s Not My Name’, the song that has since become their anthem. A three minute mash-up of hip-hop, bared-boned indie and unabashed chart bubble-gum, ‘That’s Not My Name’, which crops up two tracks into their debut album, tells you all you need to know about The Ting Tings: like all great pop songs it manages to convey utter disposability and, in the same heartbeat, the deepest profundity. Elsewhere We Started Nothing (really, is that the best title they could come up with?) divides between nu ravey-fluff (the exquisitely throwaway ‘Great DJ’), and Ramones-tinged pseudo-punk (‘Keep Your Head’). There are some surprises too – ‘Traffic Light’ is a camera-phone-in-the-air ballad that flirts with mawkishness but – result! - actually manages to tweak the heartstrings and, best of all, the glorious stomping six minute title-track. For a pair of hyped to the heavens kids who pout waaay too earnestly in their photo-shoots, The Ting Tings prove surprisingly beguiling debutantes.
Key Track: 'That's Not My Name'