The Ting Tings' Super Critical

Disco! Disco! Disco! Okay, provisional disco. With Andy (of all people) Taylor of Duran Duran at the board and onboard with song scribbling, the world’s two most creatively obnoxious long-in-the-tooth juvenile miscreants spend a half-hour or so in the lit-floor, glitter-ball promise, which singer Katie White couldn’t possibly remember and mostly-not-singer Jules De Martino might have caught the tail end of.

Oddly enough, they don’t idealize that promise. Just as folks with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack might have been shocked and/or put off by Travolta’s foul-mouthedness and casual racism within the movie himself, the chicken-scratchin’ two (plus Taylor) aren’t enshrined to the shine. The loose-knit concept album about having a perfectly human night out on the town, unfolds, not necessarily chronologically (except beginning and end), but in an understandably emotional order.

So the title cut announces White’s intention to take over (whatever’s worth taking over). “Wrong Club” funks just as hard musically, but White lightly whines, “No DJ never saved my life,” coolly riposting Indeep’s “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.” Of course, the lady in that song wrecked her car and only DJ blessings saved her neck. So maybe White just plain doesn’t need saving — but maybe she knows her lyrical history and wants to play safe.

“Wabi Sabi” infuses into a lover that Japanese doctrine of imperfection and impermanence. And “Failure,” finale to the night, stomps and kicks until “failure” becomes (provisional) success. Time for sleep. Then repeat. A new shot at getting it wrong.

• Album: Super Critical
• Artist: The Ting Tings
• Label: Pias America
• Songs: (1) Super Critical (2) Daughter (3) Do It Again (4) Wrong Clue (5) Wabi Sabi (6) Only Love (7) Communication (8) Green Poison (9) Failure