1. Great DJ
2. That's Not My Name
3. Fruit Machine
4. Traffic Light
5. Shut Up And Let Me Go
6. Keep Your Head
7. We Walk
8. Be The One
9. Impacilla Carpisung
10. We Started Nothing
Oh really? Well, who the sweet baby Jesus provoked this bastard thing which keeps rattling around
our subconscious, banging on about "the drums... the drums... the drums...." like some kind of
percussion obsessed Colonel Kurtz. Don't look at the floor Ting Tings, we know it was you. Remember,
denial: not just a river in Egypt.
No doubt, We Started Nothing proves The Ting Tings know how to write a single. Or two. Great DJ and
That's Not My Name are the sort of irritatingly brilliant numbers that give frivolous pop a good
name. Because if it isn't "the drums... the drums..." embedding itself comfortably into your brain
stem, it's "that's not my name that's not my name..." refusing to let you sleep.
Tongue miles away from cheek, irony firmly checked in at the door, anyone who can't see the simple
inane pleasure in the way Great DJ spins out page one of Guitar Riffs For Dummies into a genius
three minutes, or the way That's Not My Name turns a finger-wagging vocal and a skipping beat into
some kind of post-punk hopscotch chant, is clearly very old, very dead, or very both.
However, the other thing that We Started Nothing proves is that The Ting Tings are a long way
from having enough other songs to make an album. Fruit Machine further proves that it is impossible
to write a half decent song with the word 'machine' in the title (see also: Cash Machine, Metal
Machine Music and everything Tin Machine ever did), sounding remarkably like the theme tune to Are
You Being Served?, while Traffic Light makes you wonder exactly why the Playbus is stopping at track
four. Ding ding.
It's a *bad* song. You rarely hear a truly awful song, a song with absolutely no redeeming features
whatsoever - unless, of course, you happen to spend any sort of time around The Kooks - and
yet Traffic Light is. It sounds like the sort of floatly-light distraction tactic they employ in
particularly onerous lifts to stop you slitting your wrists.
It does get better, particularly the so the soon to be ibiquitous Apple advertising Shut Up And Let
Me Go, getting it's freak on in a vaguely 80s Wacko-Jacko fashion, but ultimately, the peaks which
follow those initial heights are never closed to scaled again.
The most damning thing you can say about it is this: it leaves The Ting Tings able to solve the age
old quandry of which song to play as an encore with a coin.
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