David Sinclair
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“Discovered” by the BBC at Glastonbury last year, then tipped for the top in the BBC's annual tastemakers' poll (just behind Adele and Duffy), the Ting Tings have duly emerged from a chrysalis of fevered expectation to enjoy their moment of pop glory.
With their insanely catchy hit, That's Not My Name, at No 1 in the chart, and its accompanying album, We Started Nothing, about to repeat that success, the duo from Salford arrived in the capital riding high on the crest of a wave.
Boasting a fashionably minimal line-up of girl singer and boy drummer - a reverse-White Stripes configuration - the Tings certainly looked the part. Katie White, with her long blonde hair and vaguely beatnik look, stomped and strutted and pushed her microphone stand around the place as if in a permanent strop, while Jules de Martino pounded out a jackboot dance beat with little variation between one number and the next. While she played a bit of guitar and dabbled with a keyboard here and there, and he added occasional guitar and backing vocals, they both plugged the gaps in the instrumental structure by using foot pedals to trigger various synthesised effects, sometimes including a full bass line.
An ingenious and well-timed concept then, but as a musical conceit this was about as slender as they come. In a set that lasted little more than 35 minutes, they romped through a bunch of songs with all the depth and sophistication of playground chants. Great DJ, Fruit Machine and Keep Your Head all had a lot of yelling and shouting set to much the same beat, while Shut Up and Let Me Go added a derivative funky guitar and bass line to the mix.
The only attempt at a differently paced number, Traffic Light, was greeted with a rising surge of conversation among an audience with an attention span that was not of the highest order.
And so to the duo's one unquestionable stroke of genius: the irresistibly savvy and quirky That's Not My Name. As sticky as bubblegum, the number was delivered by White with a gloriously petulant flourish and a rising note of hysteria as she repeated the pay-off line, “Are you calling me darling?”, while storming from side to side of the stage.
Great stuff, but as they returned for an encore of We Started Nothing, the novelty value was already beginning to wear thin.
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