We have had a few months to digest The Ting Tings radical change of direction, have they pulled it off with the brand-new album? Home is out on the 6th of June.

If you are a Ting Tings fan who has somehow missed the recent singles, this album might give you quite a shock on a first listen. This is about as radical a reinvention as a band can make. They seriously considered coming back with a different band name, explored on the track ‘Dreaming’:

“Dreaming I don’t know if we are dreaming
I don’t know if there is time
If we change our name”

As the publicist notes with the album point out though, the headlines would have written themselves, “The Ting Tings – That’s Not Their Name.” Equally whilst the band wanted their new album to be free of associated baggage, neither did they want to distance themselves from their earlier work. This is simply a change of direction that has occurred out of changing lives. It was around the pandemic when they got locked down in their home in Ibiza, having previously drifted around and moved regularly. It gave them time to reconnect with a range of albums and bands that they had grown up with and inherited from their families. They were moving from married couple to family, their daughter Meadow arriving in the Summer of 2020. Through all of this and the next few years a soft rock/yacht rock album began to shape itself influenced by Fleetwood Mac, Toto, Christopher Cross, The Eagles and Steely Dan.

Back on the 1st of March I wrote a positive review of ‘Good People Do Bad Things,’ it has only grown on me since then. The Fleetwood Mac-ness of it was still very jarring at that point. Having since seen them at Bush Hall, heard the other singles and now heard the whole album I can listen to it in a more relaxed way. The first thing that strikes me at this point is the immense quality of Katie White’s vocals. It is such a mature performance, a million miles away from the punk edged delivery of ‘Shut Up and Let Me Go.’ It channels Stevie Nicks in the way the overall sound channels Rumours and Tusk era Fleetwood Mac. At 5 minutes and 50 seconds it has the right amount of time to breathe and to indulge in a gloriously old-fashioned guitar solo. Jules De Martino does an excellent job with guitar on this album, although the live band they have assembled has seven other people in it I don’t believe any of them were involved in the recording process. De Martino plays guitar, drums and keyboards on the album. They do pull in a bit of support where needed. The fantastic guitar solos on ‘Good People Do Bad Things’ and ‘Dreaming’ are both the work of Joseph Webb, a session musician who has worked with Robert Plant and Jeff Lyne, who is involved in a few of the other tracks.

Second single ‘Dreaming’ is also immense and cuts to the heart of so much going on here. The first thing that catches your ear is the co-vocal harmonies between White and De Martino. Jules De Martino is more prominent vocally on this album than any other Ting Tings album, where he is usually only deployed sparingly. He takes lead vocals often throughout the album, and it works incredibly well. Though not as strong a singer as White, his style suits this album well and it is clear they have worked hard on their harmonising with the support of Johnny Spurling who is credited as harmony arranger on each track. The classic guitar stylings recall Chris Rea and Dire Straits in all the best ways.

Title track ‘Home’ is next, it changes up the formula with pattering hand-drumming at the start and brings in another yacht-rock staple towards the end in the saxophone solo. Though we all know saxophone solos are officially good/cool/wicked/sick/lit (delete according to generational banding) again as who doesn’t have a saxophonist in their band this year? The band name checking Steely Dan starts to make more sense here. ‘Goodbye Song’ has more of those gorgeous White/De Martino harmonies. This one has a classic narrative in the great 70s and 80s tradition. White sings about Jonny who,

“hates his job he does the overtime
Saves up all his money for that moment of goodbye”

De Martino comes in as Jonny, replying to the various stories:

“You can see she’s kind I see the way she helps
Her name is Emilou but she feels like somebody else”

The first slowing down occurs during ‘In My Hand.’ A simple, yet well-crafted acoustic guitar ditty sung by De Martino. White’s voice eventually joins in, almost Karen Carpenter-esque.

‘Mind Thunder’ is the only track on the album they did not give an outing at Bush Hall and so is the only track completely new to me here. It is another acoustic led effort with more hand drumming and harmonised vocals. ‘Danced on the Wire’ initially underwhelmed me, again, though, it has got better with repeated listens. Another track where De Martino leads the singing. It takes well over a minute to get going but then smashes you over the head with the perfect harmonies and deep emotion of the singers. Final track ‘Down’ reminds me of the spiritual quality of ‘Down To The River To Pray’ in O Brother, Where Art Thou? It is a quiet fade out compared to a lot of the complex orchestrations and instrumentations that has proceeded it.

You can understand all the doubts they had around this project, it is a band out of time, nobody is making anything like this right now. Whilst this may alienate a few older fans of the band it is also going to find a home with people who never gave The Ting Tings the time of day previously. There are older generations who will completely fall in love with this. Whilst it owes a lot to other bands it creates a strong, articulate work that shines as a new creation. A bit like The Vines album Highly Evolved that apes Nirvana but sounds like a new Nirvana album, or the way Editors always sounded like new releases from Joy Division. This may most closely resemble Fleetwood Mac but it sounds like new, fresh Fleetwood Mac rather than direct copies of songs. Sports Team are showing that classic album sounds do have legs with a younger audience who did not experience them at the time, hopefully this glorious album will find itself an audience who can appreciate the excellent emotion and craftmanship on display.