Where The Wild Tings Were

At a time when acts are crying out for a bit of label attention and each sector of the industry seems to be putting the squeeze on every poor artist on the last rung of the ladder, chatting to Jules De Martino, skin hitter for The Ting Tings, is strangely refreshing.

In the process of making Welcome To Nowheresville, they’ve been fighting the man… maaan. Other journos have offered heartfelt condolences to the industry execs required to deal with the twosome (to be fair, it does sound potentially nightmarish). That said, surely it’s a welcome harkening back to when the music makers ruled the roost?
“We finally got to make the record the way we wanted to,” smiles the 40-something sunglasses wearing drummer. “When we were making it there was a lot of – not ‘pressure’ – but a lot of ‘engagement’ about the first record being so successful. So successful that you have people constantly saying, ‘More of that please’.”
You could chalk them up as a bit peevish, but for Jules and singer Katie White, autonomy is paramount.
“We do everything ourselves. It’s a full-on, in-a-bubble scenario. After (UK No.1 debut) We Started Nothing, we wanted to be as honest as we could. Make it as schizophrenic as possible, as random as possible, as ‘playlist’ as possible. Listening to music on our MP3 players made everything click. I don’t really buy albums any more. I’ve quite a big record collection and it’s all stored in boxes. That was the inspiration. I’m traveling around the world with Shazam on my phone, finding out who this damn artist is in bloody Istanbul. ‘This is what we should be writing, this is the type of album we should be challenging ourselves with.’”
Steering clear of ‘woe is me, we’re tired touring’ themes, their grand idea was to, er, be random. Still The Tings Tings are first and foremost a singles band indebted to pop – TLC and the Spice Girls influence the new record – so maybe that’s the way to go. Haphazard. Problem was, the powers-that-be didn’t think so.
“When you start making records like that you cause a lot of debate with your ‘new friends’ – with them saying that no-one’s going to understand what you’re doing. You’re making a new record and saying to the label, ‘This is all up to us now, it’s nothing to do with anyone else.’ There’s a lot of bullshit debate. More time sitting in meetings then actually playing your guitar and drums.”
The wider world first felt the disharmony when underwhelming interim single ‘Hands’ arrived in mid-2010. However, you can trace the sighs back to the end of ‘09 and their discomfort attending The Grammys.
“Being signed to a major means you have to go and do promo,” he concedes. “We’re not great at going out and talking about ourselves for days on end. So the red carpet and the hyper-press is something that we don’t do very well. We’ve banned most of it. We’re really aware of things that are happening around us, especially the attention that Adele’s got for her music. I think, at the moment, music is getting back to honesty. With Adele, it’s not the type of thing I’d go and buy. However, we’ve met her a handful of times at these things and she has a similar philosophy about the way she goes about getting on with things: writing music, loving music and doing what she wants to do. I think it’s starting to pay off.”
To ensure that honesty, the band felt the need to flee the environs of Manchester. They decamped to Berlin and then the false start came.
“Once we got there, we were disillusioned because it was minus 27C. Katie was like, ‘I’ve just worked the hardest I’m probably ever going to work in my entire life, to come to somewhere where it’s absolutely freezing. I’m in the Eastern bloc, so all I’m eating are kebabs and dodging the dog shit on the ground’. We just felt hard done by. There should’ve been a three-week break where we went to New York and just had parties every night…”
Six tracks deep, the label arrived and seemingly loved the work. Jules and Katie hit the button marked ‘delete’ soon after. This is where the trouble started.
“When we went back to the label and told them that we’d scrapped six songs, they really freaked out. Their agenda was already set out, they thought they’d a record coming in a month’s time. ‘Hands’ had already been A-listed on radio and then we just disappeared amidst all this promo scheduling. We were nowhere to be found, which causes a problem.”
The cheeky scamps eventually turned up in Murcia, southern Spain, where that sophomore effort finally took shape. Available for your listening pleasure now, it throws everything from ‘60s Spector pop to ‘90s R&B into the mix. More importantly, both parties seem pleased. For now. Will number three require such a global trek?
“Well, we’ve got a tour that takes us all the way around the world until September. Come September, we definitely will not tour for two-and-a-half-years again. We’ll get back in the studio and make another record.”
Music to everyone’s ears.

Sounds From Nowheresville is out now on Columbia