It’s no Klaxons catastrophe, but this second set is a so-so return on four years’ work.
If you plotted hopes for The Ting Tings’ second album on a graph, the result would be a drawn-out, four-year nosedive. After the boisterous, day-glo brilliance of their 2008 debut, We Started Nothing, the odd-couple duo seemed like one of UK pop’s brightest prospects. Then they announced their second album would be called Kunst, an instantly-wearisome joke that suggested sneery disdain for their pop fanbase, and they became mired in lengthy recording sessions in Berlin, that clichéd halfway house for disillusioned ‘serious’ artists. After dramatically abandoning a whole album of material, the question changed from "will the new album be good?" to "will it ever exist?".
Now it’s finally arrived, it seems reasonable to approach Sounds From Nowheresville with caution, particularly given the hideous cover image of a skeletonised Katie White and Jules de Martino. It might as well be daubed in blood and excreta, announcing "Pop Fans Stay Away". Which is plain bloody-mindedness because – despite its eclectic genre-hopping and snotty art-punk attitude – this is first and foremost a pop album (indeed, one song, the strumming, breathy Day to Day, sounds like a 99% DNA match for It’s OK!, by those revered art-house rebels Atomic Kitten).
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Source: BBC Music