Sounds from Nowheresville

Sounds from Nowheresville
Studio album by The Ting Tings
Released	24 February 2012 (2012-02-24)
Recorded	2009–11, Berlin, London, Murcia and Ibiza
Genre	Indie rock, indie pop, dance-punk, synthpop, new wave, ska[1]
Length	33:59
Label	Columbia
Producer	Jules De Martino
The Ting Tings chronology
We Started Nothing (2008) Sounds from Nowhereville (2012)
Singles from Sounds from Nowhereville
"Hang It Up" Released: 27 December 2011 (2011-12-27) "Hit Me Down Sonny" Released: 25 May 2012 (2012-05-25)

Sounds from Nowheresville is the second studio album by English duo The Ting Tings, released on 24 February 2012 by Columbia Records. It was by preceded the lead single "Hang It Up", which was released on 27 December 2011. Although their 2010 single "Hands" was originally reported not to appear on the album, the duo confirmed on Twitter that it would appear on the deluxe edition of the album. The band revealed that they scrapped an entire album after "stumbl[ing] on this new sound" during a visit to Spain.^[2]

The band launched a contest called Show Us Yours, which gave artists and graphic designers the chance to create art and videos to show the band. One piece of art by artist Milan Abad showed both Katie White and Jules De Martino as skeletons, which caught the band's attention and ultimately became the album's artwork. White stated that other entries would be placed in the album insert.^[3]

Sounds from Nowheresville debuted at number twenty-three on the UK Albums Chart with first-week sales of 6,246 copies.^[4]

Background

In January 2010, it was reported that The Ting Tings originally planned to name the album Kunst, which means "art" in German. "Just round the corner to our studio [in Berlin] there's a massage parlour, it's called Massage Kunst", De Martino explained. "It's Massage Art, basically. We took a picture of that and sent it to our label, saying this is the title of the album. They went berserk."^[5] The duo ultimately cancelled the release of their second album in 2010 because they felt it sounded too similar to everything else on the radio. In an interview with Digital Spy, White said, "We were in Berlin where there is a great electro scene, and so we made songs like that, but quickly realised that everything on the radio was Euro-pop shite. We didn't want our record to be tarnished with that brush." De Martino continued, "We scrapped six of the ten songs, which upset quite a few people. We put out 'Hands', which was meant to be an underground, white label-only release and it ended up being playlisted on Radio 1—we were quite angry so erased over half the album." They also insisted that they "found [their] feet" with their new album, adding, "No-one would give a shit if we'd made a shit Euro-pop song, even if it went top ten."^[6] The album was recorded in Berlin, London, Murcia and Ibiza.

Singles and promotion

The music video for the album's lead single, "Hang It Up" was uploaded to the duo's YouTube channel on 18 October 2011.^[7] "Hang It Up" was released digitally on 27 December 2011,^[8] the first song they had released since "Hands" in October 2010. Hang it Up experience the most commercial success in Japan peaking at number eight failing to chart in other countries, ending as a commercial failure.

A music video for the Bag Raiders remix of "Silence" was directed by Dan Gable and filmed at Salford Lads Club in Manchester in July 2011.^[9][10] The video premiered on 21 November 2011.^[9]

The album's second official single, "Hit Me Down Sonny", was added to the BBC Radio 1 C List on 2 May 2012.^[11] A four-track EP for the single was released digitally on 25 May 2012.^[12] An accompanying video, consisting of live footage from a show in Paris, debuted on 3 August 2012.^[13]

A video for "Soul Killing" was filmed on 29 June 2012.^[14] The duo stated on Twitter on 13 July 2012 that the video would be released soon,^[15] but this never materialised.

The Ting Tings also made videos for other songs from the album. A video for an acoustic rendition of "Day to Day" was uploaded to their YouTube channel on 14 March 2012.^[16] On 13 January 2012, the duo reported via Twitter that they were filming a video for "Help" in Manchester.^[17] However, the video was never released.

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	52/100[18]
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[19]
The A.V. Club	B−[20]
The Daily Telegraph	[21]
Drowned in Sound	4/10[22]
The Guardian	[23]
The Independent	[24]
NME	5/10[25]
Pitchfork Media	1.8/10[26]
PopMatters	4/10[27]
Rolling Stone	[28]

Sounds from Nowheresville received mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 52, based on 30 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[18] Andy Gill of The Independent praised the album as "a masterclass in modern pop creation, pinballing from style to style without endangering their essential 'TingTingness'".^[24] The Daily Telegraph's Andrew Perry wrote that the album "sounds anything but laboured", concluding, "Whatever the style, White and de Martino [...] know how to knock a tune together and have delivered a pop party album thrillingly in tune with contemporary listening habits."^[21] Rolling Stone's Jody Rosen opined that on Sounds from Nowheresville, "the band again is at its best when White is proclaiming [...] and dissing [...] in a voice pitched somewhere between cheerleader, rapper and Tourette's sufferer."^[28] Allmusic editor Heather Phares, however, felt that the "scrappy pop of their first album is largely [...] replaced by a glossy eclecticism that, for better or worse, feels labored over." Phares continued, "Sounds from Nowheresville shows that the Ting Tings have more range than their debut suggested, but while it's more ambitious and crafted, it's just not as coherent as We Started Nothing."^[19] The A.V. Club's Dan Weiss commented the album is "a blast when it's on and imminently forgettable when it's not".^[20]

In a review for the NME, Fraser McAlpine dubbed it a "lukewarm hotchpotch of an album", adding that "[t]he unfortunate irony is that Sounds From Nowheresville doesn't sound much like a grand rejection of pop music at all. It just sounds a little bereft of ideas, and way too short."^[25] Stephen Foster of PopMatters characterised the album as "sluggish, self-conscious, and seemingly deliberately bad", while noting that "[t]he best Nowheresville has to offer is 'Hit Me Down Sonny', a band march of a song that offers up goofily incoherent lyrics but possess the energy and verve [...] of the best work from We Started Nothing."^[27] Simon Jay Catling of Drowned in Sound expressed that "despite the fact that the production glitters with the high attention-seeking compression of pop music, any explorations haven't gone as far as finding any memorable hooks—and the ones which do stick in the mind do more so for their sheer irritable inanity", citing tracks like "Silence", "One by One" and "In Your Life" as "decent moments".^[22] The Guardian's Alexis Petridis stated that Sounds from Nowheresville "keeps doing the things bands do when they don't really know what to do: concentrating on riffs instead of melodies, production dynamics instead of songs. The result is an album that sounds simultaneously hefty and vaporous."^[23] Jonathan Keefe of Slant Magazine panned the album as "tuneless" and "inert", and found that its songs "aren't noteworthy in terms of content or construction, nor do they resolve into any kind of coherent aesthetic that would give context as to what it is the Ting Tings are really after."^[29] Pitchfork Media's Hari Ashurst critiqued that "[t]he restless genre-hopping vibe makes this feel less like an album and more like a series of tracks written to briefs [...] The only common thread is how uniformly bad everything is."^[26]

Track listing

Personnel

Credits for the deluxe edition of Sounds from Nowheresville adapted from liner notes.^[31]

Charts

Release history

References