Noisy American kids are brought to book

It was just too much like temptation.

Impossibly young American act Tiny Masters Of Today have been taking that one stage further and are about to break one of those cardinal rules of library etiquette by playing a rock show in Sheffield’s Central Library.

It is part of the New York duo’s Get It Loud In Libraries tour which heads north on Thursday as the hype machine gets white hot for their really quite impressive garage punk debut album Bang Bang Boom Cake.

The band centres on 13-year-old Ivan (guitar/vocals) and his 11-year-old sister Ada (bass/vocals).

The siblings began writing songs in the summer of 2004 when Ada was only eight.

“We started the band cos we were bored,” explains her brother.

“We aren’t allowed to watch TV on school nights and we don’t have a Playstation or anything like that, so we had to find other ways to entertain ourselves.”

As is the way these days, their crude home recordings found their way on to MySpace and the pair swiftly developed an international reputation.

Within weeks, a reporter from Newsweek magazine stumbled upon their web page and declared their “brief, bratty” songs “remarkable.”

Now the rock ‘n’ roll rug rats are allowed to tour the world – before the new school term starts back in Brooklyn – and pitch up at Surrey Street with music that is attitudinal and patchy in terms of quality but has a precocious charm that had Bowie praising the band in The Times.

Russell Simins of the legendary Jon Spencer Blues Explosion also found the band via their MySpace page and petitioned to be their live drummer, replacing the old laptop which previously did the job.

“Our parents had to talk to him first and make sure he wasn’t some psycho,” recalls Ada.

Once vetted Russell also got the kids into a proper recording studio with the idea of making another single, which subsequently grew into an album that touches on everything from hip-hop to good old-fashioned garage rock.

Youth is only part of their charm.

Amid the general exuberance is a refreshingly anti-authoritarian stance which spares nobody, from elementary school cliques to the US president.

Ex-Moldy Peaches singer Kimya Dawson sang back up on several tracks and co-wrote a song and B-52s frontman Fred Schneider joined in on Disco Bomb.

Gibby Haynes from Butthole Surfers appears on Texas and the pair even duel with Karen O and Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs on Hologram World, a song largely composed over email.

n Tickets cost 3.50. Call 0114 273 4729 or see www.myspace.com/getitloudinlibraries for more.