The Ting Tings

SteveK sits down with Katie and Jules, of the Indie Brit-Pop sensations

—

Like most of us out there, my first introduction to the Ting-Tings came by way of an iPod commercial.  One thing Apple does well is pair its product placement with up and coming Indie bands and hot acts.  Certainly, that was the case with “Shut Up and Let Me Go”.

So, when the Ting-Tings appeared on the roster for Osheaga 2009, I knew that I would have to take some time to speak with them.  That chance came after their manic and highly exuberant set on the second day of the music fest, when Katie and Jules were recuperating in their trailer.  They gave me quite an eye-opening view of their lives as pop stars:

CONFRONT: I’m here with the Ting-Tings.

KATIE: Hello!

CONFRONT: So, you said during your show that this is your first time in Montreal, and other than that rather famous “Shut Up and Let Me Go”, from the iPod commercial, Montreal audiences really haven’t gotten a chance to get to know you, so tell us a little bit about yourselves.

KATIE: Well, there’s two of us in the band, Jules plays drums, guitar, keyboards, base; I play guitar, drums, keyboards; we kind of swap instruments onstage; we use loop pedals so we capture sound and then we loop it.  We kind of see ourselves as a pop band, but we do it all ourselves—we’re kind of like a DIY pop band.  We wrote, recorded it, did the artwork, and we’re from Manchester, England and…that’s about it; that’s all I can think of right now; we haven’t had much sleep!

CONFRONT: When did you guys get into town?

KATIE: We were playing in New York last night…we didn’t get to sleep.  We got a flight at seven in the morning so we had to set off at four-fifteen, so by the time we got off stage we moved through the night and we got here at ten o’clock this morning.

JULES: And we got here, and our hotel rooms weren’t ready.  So we had to sit around for another hour.  So, we got three hours sleep this afternoon so we’re a little bit exhausted.

KATIE: And I think some motherfucker spiked my drink last night as well, so I feel really weird!

CONFRONT: So, basically you guys have known each other for some years; you were in another band before the Ting-Tings and then I guess the last couple of years it’s just really started happening all at once; what’s the change been like for you guys and how do you find what’s happening in your career now, versus just a couple of years ago?

JULES: I think the change for us, obviously, is when we first started, we made a record in the UK and; it went Number One.  Small country, the UK, and we toured the UK—and you can do it in two or three weeks and we toured it, and it was an amazing feeling.  But then with the digital age and the type of music we play and the way we wanted to go about exploiting our own music, many countries around the world put out different records.  In France they were going with “We Walk” and in the US they were going with “Shut Up” and in the UK it was “That’s Not My Name” and so immediately, rather than it being progressive—a lot of bands run around doing it territory by territory giving themselves some space and building up around the Euro—what happened with us is a lot of territories were using different records, we had to get out there quick because they were giving us shows we wanted to play so we kind of zig-zagged rather than follow a trail all around the world.  And it’s a beautiful thing to do because it’s a very free way to do it; it’s not so programmed but it’s also very exhausting we were catching three planes a day and helicopters to get to the location.  We go to Finland and then we have to take another plane to the North and then that afternoon you’ve got a flight to Scotland but you can’t connect because you have to go to Hub flying and it’s really frustrating because you’re sitting in airports a lot of time, busses and planes and you want to be writing or you want to be creating something online and there’s no way you can do it.  And like Katie said, we’ve come through the night to be here and got three hours sleep.  It has a toll and when we got on stage—I mean, today we had a short set; we had a forty-five minute set so it wasn’t too taxing but sometimes we do an hour and ten, then fly and do another hour and ten somewhere else.

KATIE: And we’re literally crawling offstage at the end.  We have to give it so much energy because there’s just two of us in the band.  And it’s kind of what our music about, so you can’t do it half-assed.  The good thing is you can eat as many cheeseburgers as you want and you don’t get fat because you’re working so hard each day.

CONFRONT: That’s one advantage I like!  But, have you guys—how much down-time have you guys had?  Are you planning to do anything to relax?  Montreal is one of the best cities in North America; a huge tourist destination; do you guys at least have a few hours to go see the sites?

JULES: We kind of do, but mostly not.  We’ve been around the world about four or five times, so we’re lucky in that we’ve revisited places and normally the second time around we have more time.  But the first time we come to a place we’re quite tired.  Today, we’ve finished now and I think we have a couple of hours of promo and we have got the evening off but we fly tomorrow morning early; but we haven’t slept.

CONFRONT: Sounds like you should just go back to the hotel and go to bed.

JULES: It’s a guarantee we go back with the crew and everyone has one drink and a cup of tea and everyone starts flaking out.

CONFRONT: Well, I recommend that before you leave Montreal that you sample Poutine—it’s a local dish; I don’t know if anyone’s spoken to you about it yet?

KATIE: Isn’t that, like, chips and gravy?

CONFRONT: Chips and gravy and cheese.

KATIE: Where I’m from—Manchester in Northern England—our speciality there is chips and gravy!  I grew up eating that; not with cheese, but.

CONFRONT: Yeah, we add cheddar curd cheese to it; it puts it over the top.

KATIE: But in England when you go to London they’re like “Eew chips and gravy?  That’s weird!” and where I’m from?  I love it!  Even at school, I would have heaps of chips and gravy on it every day.

CONFRONT: Well I mean, that’s just it; obviously I am a foodie, but I can’t understand about Quebec: We live right next to the biggest junk food consuming nation on the planet and they are repelled by the idea of Poutine.  It’s like the idea of chips and gravy and cheese is repugnant to them, and yet it’s like their three favourite things in one!  But you guys have got to try it; there’s quite a few good Poutine joints around town.  Any place that sells hot dogs and fries usually has Poutine.

KATIE: Well you’ve recommended it so we really should give it a try.

CONFRONT: I have this next question because it’s something I discovered we actually have in common: You guys met because of the music of Portishead.  They’re one of my favourite bands in the world.  But you guys don’t sound a thing like Portishead.  So is the music you listen to generally that different from the music you base your style on?  And what are your musical influence for your particular style?

JULES: Well when we first met we were huge fans of Portishead, and the two of us started as a recording outfit and we wanted to sound like Portishead.  And there was no question about it we tried to imitate their records.  Our first demo was a Portishead rip-off.  But what happened when we were doing that we tried to reproduce it live and we couldn’t.  And we weren’t as good as Portishead.  They were better at doing that kind of dark Blues stuff than we were.  We were a lot more up and there was still a lot more pop coming from our stuff.  We ended up becoming a completely new band.  And that band had a couple more members including a DJ, and that band was called Dear Eskimo.  That band had a little bit more of what we were doing with Kate’s vocals; she was a lot more relaxed and laid back.  But the Pop stuff kept growing within and then that band went wrong and the frustration of failing all the time came through in the Ting-Tings and Katie’s energy just went through the roof and that’s where we got all this energy from.  So we’re miles away from where we started and then obviously the biggest bands in the Ting-Tings area were the Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Blondie—we just got fixated by those bands, and the sound drifted up.

KATIE: Yeah, it’s weird as well because we just couldn’t sound like Portishead.  And what we did with the Ting-Tings, we didn’t set out to sound like Talking Heads, but we loved that kind of inventive pop.

CONFRONT: Yeah,

KATIE: And we sort of naturally came out of it.  I think Portishead comes out naturally with the kind of songs they write and for us, our songs had more hooks and we were feeling really depressed at the time because our last band had been dropped and we were skint [Brit. slang  meaning “Broke”] and the bailiffs had taken all our equipment and we had fallen out with friends.  And I think it was probably the way to cope was writing songs that were more upbeat, to kind of lift ourselves out the shit.  That’s probably one of the reasons that our songs are quite up.

JULES: And I think that because we’re up now, and we’ve been touring all corners of the world our next album’s goanna be—

KATIE: Down?

JULES: It’s goanna be really—

CONFRONT: It’s going to be Metallica: ‘One’

KATIE: Yeah!

CONFRONT: Well thanks very much!  I listened to your album and I really liked it, but your live set is just a thousand times more brilliant!  It’s really great.  I wanted you guys to know that I enjoyed the show, and I hope you get to come back to Montreal real soon!

KATIE: Nice meeting you!

JULES: Thanks!

The Ting-Tings are taking the world by storm as we speak, and I hope that when they do get a second run through Montreal that they have more time to rest, relax and take in all that the city offers.  Maybe I can start a Montreal-for-Rockstars tour service; it seems I did play ambassador for my city throughout my time at Osheaga, this year!

To learn more about the Ting-Tings visit the site below:

http://www.thetingtings.com