Ting Tings – House of Blues – 10/17/08
Posted October 21st, 2008 · Artists: The Ting Tings
Got another taste of the Ting Tings on Friday night, and they were incredibly solid once again. Got my first look at them on Saturday afternoon at Lollapalooza and they were very good, pretty much what I expected, upbeat, dancy kind of rock with a lot of bouncing around and some good crowd interaction. The show on Friday was pretty much the same animal, just in a little smaller venue with a little more dedicated crowd.
This was my first foray into the Dallas HOB, and it wasn’t bad, though the bar situation SUCKED. I have never seen a worse bar as far as getting drinks at a concert than this one. It was at the smaller room upstairs and it had a fairly good intimate feel to it. It was sold out though it didn’t feel super packed like I expected it to (which I guess was a good thing). There were some real weirdos in this crowd though. I saw at least 3 just straight up PDA make out sessions going on for like 30 minutes before the show started, and then two of them started grinding on each other during the whole last half of the show. Yuck.
Anyway, the band was pretty awesome and tight. The band consists of only 2, Katie the singer and Jules the drummer. Both are definitely comfortable up on stage and they have some pretty nice crowd interaction moments built into the show, and really do try to go that extra mile and get everyone involved instead of just passively listening to a rock show. That was the real strength as there was so much enticement to party that you really couldn’t help but party. They rolled through pretty much all of the debut album, and the energy was really high and awesome throughout the show.
The crowd definitely knew the songs and there was much singing along going on throughout the crowd. Obviously the crowd went bonkers for “Shut Up And Let Me Go”, which was top notch, and “That’s Not My Name”, which isn’t my favorite song of theirs but they made it work very well live.
I think this is certainly one of those bands that just translates very well into the live scene, and while their album is pretty good, live is really the way to experience these guys. If you like the album even a little bit I would recommend checking them live because it really brings the songs out and even songs on the album that I don’t really care for as much sound really good live, which is always a good marker for a live band in my book.
Ting Tings – Keep Your Head – From We Started Nothing
