With their 2008 debut studio album, We Started Nothing (which featured their sassy, ultra-catchy chart-topping song “That’s Not My Name”), the English duo The Ting Tings established themselves as a bold band that wasn’t afraid to buck trends. Vocalist/guitarist Katie White and multi-instrumentalist Jules De Martino – who are also a married couple, as well as bandmates – began traveling the world, moving from their native Manchester area in England to Germany, France, the U.S., back to England, and, most recently, the resort island of Ibiza, in Spain. During their travels, they released three more albums, which expanded their sound into more diverse musical territories while still retaining their indie rock cred. As White and De Martino explain during a recent video chat from Ibiza, their fifth album, Home (which is set for release on June 6) reflects their newfound serenity in Spain, parenthood, and embracing a new outlook on life and their band.
What made Ibiza so inspiring that you wanted to live there?
JULES DE MARTINO: We came here I can’t remember how many years ago. We played Ibiza Rocks, which is part of the festival circuit in Europe. Anybody that’s doing the rounds comes into Ibiza and plays this festival gig. So it was our turn to come in and play it, and there was just something about the island. We had five days after the show where we were with a lot of friends, it was sunny, and there’s beaches – who wouldn’t want to be here? And I think that was the first time playing a show in an environment [where we thought], “This is just cool.” And then we came back a year later, and we found out that there was quite a lot of artists living on the island. Not necessarily just musicians, but creators in all different shapes and forms. So as artists, you think, “That might fit.” There’s people to hang out with, and when you live near creative people, you feel more inspired. So we thought that was a positive. And then we came back to do the third record [2014’s Super Critical], and there was a bond starting to develop here, and Katie really liked it.
KATIE WHITE: I’m not a clubber at all, so it’s not the clubs that drew us here, really. It was blue skies, pine trees. It feels a bit like California, but it’s an island off the coast of Spain, so it’s very relaxed. It’s quite a unique place, really.
JULES DE MARTINO: It feels like it’s been left behind a little bit, but the amount of people that come to live here, modern world creatives and everything, bring it back to speed. [But] if your internet goes down, you’re waiting for two weeks for someone to turn up. There’s no quick fix here. You know, that kind of old school thing, which is romantic, and it’s nice because we went at such a fast pace for twelve, thirteen years; we just didn’t stop working. If it wasn’t writing and recording, it was touring, and we really needed to think a little bit more about opening our horizon and see what was actually going on. Life goes past so fast, you know?
KATIE WHITE: We were touring so much, and then we was like, “Shit, we’ve got to stop if we want to have a life outside of touring. We’ll have a child.” So we had our child, but pursuing music could take up such a big chunk of our lives. And it’s a strange feeling when you’ve had a first album go so big, and then you’re almost trying to chase that for one or two albums. It kind of haunts you a bit. But it was an amazing experience, and we were still a band that could tour and play, but you’re still chasing that fix. I think at some point we learned, “Let that go.” So, yeah, [it was a] definite choice of us to slow down and just find a bit of joy and enjoy our child. But still, apart from our child, we love writing songs. So we just slowly started to write songs here. Just for the love of songwriting. And I feel like that’s why they’ve come out so strong. But it’s taken us seventeen years to get back to that place of writing for the love of it. It’s almost like, every album, we moved to a new city as part of reinvention, and when we had a child, we couldn’t do that – and then we realized it was actually really nice to have a bit of grace and poise and not just be on the move all the time.
Is this why you decided to name this album ‘Home”?
JULES DE MARTINO: Yeah, it came with a double package. Firstly, we actually didn’t think about being in the band anymore when we were living in London. Katie was pregnant, and other things were happening in our lives that were, I guess, more important in many ways. And we reached that point where we dropped everything. We just sat around dealing with thinking, “We’re going to be parents; that’s going to change everything. Our lives have been on the road, mostly, and that’s going to change.” We just had to get our heads around that and start to learn to be normal. The last thing we want is a child to come and it’s not quite right. So we were practicing for that arrival, I suppose. But then there was COVID, which changed everything, as well. That was another whole craziness about not being able to travel around. And we dropped the band. We said to each other, “This is it. This is the moment where you feel you don’t need it anymore. We’ve got a baby coming, COVID’s here, everything’s changing. Maybe we need to think about something else that’s going to be creative in our lives.” And I think maybe we switched a little bit from being in a band together to thinking about writing songs together. It’s a difference between writing songs for your band, or just sitting at home on a piano and writing songs for nobody, or everybody. And that’s what we started to do. We made a [vision] board, and we’d pin loads of our favorite artists [on it]: The Eagles, Steely Dan, earlier on Fleetwood Mac, Dire Straits. Every time we’ve been on tour, we would play those records on the bus, and they were so soothing – amazing soft rock tracks. Gliding through the night, listening to Dire Straits. So we just went back to that, and got into these analog recording techniques. I’d wake up in the morning going, “Imagine if we were in The Eagles. Imagine there was loads of people in the band, and we were singing all those harmonies.” And we started writing for that concept, and it’s like the shackles were off and we were able to write on our grand piano. We were able to write on acoustic guitars again, rather than laptops.
KATIE WHITE: And let go of trying to be cool, as well. We just wanted to serve the song, really. Whatever makes a song good – if that’s a very simple lyric that people can sing along with, or if it’s something quite wistful. So just, yeah, just letting go of all that weight.
JULES DE MARTINO: And then obviously, having become a family, that was a new home for us. For the first time since when I was a little boy, that “home” feeling was a reality. So you had loads of distractions, and you fell asleep on the sofa because you were knackered. We’d never had a situation where, even though music’s really important to me and Katie, it wasn’t everything for the first time. It was part of something. Whereas before having a child, it was everything.
What do you think it is about your work that that has enabled you to continually connect with people, even when you’re experimenting with different musical styles?
KATIE WHITE: I think we’re very earnest, and we’re very in our own bubble, and we really don’t feel part of the music industry. Once we stepped away from being on a major record label after our second album [2012’s Sounds from Nowheresville], we really have just done whatever we wanted. Probably to our detriment in some ways – like, probably not good career choices – but we just floated around doing what we want. I think that people maybe feel that, or respect that, because they don’t feel like it’s the big sell. It’s just people being creative throughout their lives. And sometimes it’s more popular, and other times it’s not, but the creativity has not stopped. We’ve been writing songs for twenty years now. We’ve dedicated our lives to it.
JULES DE MARTINO: We’ve moved around and changed up, and deconstructed our career. It’s not like people have to like everything, but if anything, people respect that is a very natural journey. We’ve just gone with whatever life throws us as a musicians. We’ve dealt with it. I look back, and I don’t know how we got through it sometimes.
KATIE WHITE: We’ve found peace with it now, which is nice.
Anything else you’d like people to know about this new album?
KATIE WHITE: We’re doing it independently, so we’re not expecting it to take over the world. We feel it’s quite strong and earnest, and we hope it builds quite nicely and builds momentum, and people play it and then listen to it again because they enjoyed it. It would really suit us for it to just slowly grow, rather than be this big push that we were used to on a major [record label].
JULES DE MARTINO: We definitely want people to hear it. That’s a hard thing when you’re independent. People go, “I didn’t know you had a record out.” We want people to know we’ve got a record out because we want them to hear it, and we also want to be on that stage. We’ve got a beautiful band. We spent a year putting together some amazing players. So we go out as a nine piece band, like a full retro outfit. It’s amazing. So we want people to hear this record because we want the opportunity to put that full band on that stage.
The Ting Tings tour dates:
June 9: London, England – EartH THEATRE
June 13: Manchester, England – GORILLA
August 23: Portugal – VILAR DE MOUROS FESTIVAL
