{"id":2762,"date":"2021-05-11T16:35:15","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T14:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ponderosa.it\/?post_type=artisti&p=2762"},"modified":"2022-05-17T11:17:44","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T09:17:44","slug":"tindersticks","status":"publish","type":"artisti","link":"https:\/\/ponderosa.it\/en\/artist\/tindersticks\/","title":{"rendered":"Tindersticks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cPast Imperfect: The Best of Tindersticks \u201992-\u201921\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNobody was between us and the records that we made,\u201d says Tindersticks frontman Stuart Staples. Mavens of intimate and expansive mood-song, Tindersticks have forged paths of their own unobstructed making over three decades, avidly trend-averse in their dusky and far-reaching explorations of the heart. Released through City Slang on xxxx, Past Imperfect: The Best of Tindersticks \u201992-\u201921<\/em> maps the band\u2019s 30-year journey across a peerless 20-track chronology. \u201cEach step a story,\u201d as Staples said on \u201cHow He Entered\u201d. And every song a fresh twist in a winding tale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hindsight tells a richer story, of course, but they gave the impression of arriving fully formed in the early 1990s. Brimming with ambition and imagination, Tindersticks\u2019 first three double albums issued ragged ruminations and tea-stained symphonies from the trenches of trouble and desire. The press shook up references to The Bad Seeds, Leonard Cohen and Lee Hazlewood, with Ennio Morricone\u2019s orchestra as the bar-band. But the six-piece were architects of their own world. From their eponymous debut album (1993), the symphonic rush of \u201cCity Sickness\u201d declares that intent: \u201cThe centre of things from where everything stems is not where I belong,\u201d sings Stuart. \u201cHer\u201d, meanwhile, is a whiplash show of frantic energy, a spaghetti-western panic attack of bottled masculinity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Formed in Nottingham, the band were tight-knit and clear about what they wanted to be. Four members would later share a house in Willesden, recording demos in the kitchen: kitchen-sink dramas. Free of ego, here was a band who truly listened to one another, reflected in songs that hover in the spaces between players or take wing with a pooled potency. Keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist David Boulter roots that tendency in an \u201canti-musician\u201d way of thinking: \u201cThat post-punk thing of not wanting to over-know what you\u2019re doing \u2013 you want it to remain pure.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it came to making the debut album, as Stuart explains, they resisted the taint of record-label machinations. \u201cMajor labels were offering us a lot of money but it wasn\u2019t our world. We wanted to make a record, we wanted the budget to make a record \u2013 and we wanted a new piano. We spent such a long time dreaming about this moment that we had to make it like it was for us. And because it was a success, that gave us the confidence to make the second album in exactly the same way.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second album (1995) showcased an increased assurance in songcraft and lushness, tethered to bed-side intimacies. A gorgeous duet with The Walkabouts\u2019 Carla Torgerson, \u201cTravelling Light\u201d is the No 1 that never was. The tremulous \u201cTiny Tears\u201d has since earnt extended stays of life in long-term band collaborator Claire Denis\u2019 film N\u00e9nette et Boni<\/em> and TV hit The Sopranos<\/em>. Like a French film in miniature in itself, \u201cMy Sister\u201d etches out a tragicomic tale as richly mordant story-song. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along the way, the band notched up ambitious concerts, from orchestral shows to a residency at London\u2019s ICA. Their scope expanded further with a ravishing third album, Curtains<\/em> (1997), from which the lusty mariachi swing of \u201cRented Rooms\u201d appears. After three such albums, Tindersticks showed new mettle with the first of many radical shifts on Simple Pleasure<\/em> (1999). \u201cThere\u2019s moments when you need to be brave,\u201d says Stuart. \u201cFrom us meeting and making three double albums, Curtains<\/em> was the end of something. Simple Pleasure<\/em> to me was a tough time because it was like turning a tanker around. But with hindsight, we wouldn\u2019t have continued to exist if we hadn\u2019t had a moment of, like, we\u2019ve got to take this apart and put it back together in a different way.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was a tighter, more contained Tindersticks work, with the band\u2019s previously subliminal 1970s soul leanings upfront. The vibrant \u201cCan We Start Again?\u201d proves the shift to be a fruitful one, as does \u201cDying Slowly\u201d, the opener from Pleasure<\/em>\u2019s follow-up album, Can Our Love\u2026<\/em>(2001). Released in 2003, Waiting for the Moon<\/em> forged a kind of rapprochement between new directions and formative instincts, represented here by \u201cSometimes It Hurts\u201d (a duet with the late Lhasa de Sala) and the sublime \u201cMy Oblivion\u201d, a song of silky beauty that seems to stop time live.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After an emotional live performance of their second album at London\u2019s Barbican in 2006, with long-standing collaborators on strings and brass (including Terry Edwards) guesting, the band said farewell to bandmates Al Macauley, Dickon Hinchliffe and Mark Colwill. Staples, Boulter and guitarist Neil Fraser were left to start again. Bassist\/multi-instrumentalist Dan McKinna and drummer Thomas Belhom joined for the warming rebirth of The Hungry Saw<\/em> (2008), before Earl Harvin took over on drums for the increasingly confident Falling Down a Mountain<\/em> (2010), here represented by the Motown-beat buoyancy of \u201cHarmony Around My Table\u201d. That rebirth reached fervent fruition on The Something Rain<\/em> (2012), which brought \u201ca new freedom\u201d to the band, says Stuart. \u201cShow Me Everything\u201d, \u201cMedicine\u201d and the electrifying \u201cThis Fire of Autumn\u201d provide testimony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The line-up solidified, later work armed Tindersticks\u2019 exploratory fervour with a fertile focus. Across Six Leap Years<\/em> (2013) found the band re-recording cherished or \u2018lost\u2019 songs with the benefit of experience, among them the lovely \u201cWhat Are You Fighting For?\u201d, dual-piano proof that Tindersticks\u2019 deep cuts go deeper than most. Music for the First World War commemorations (Ypres<\/em>, 2014) and F Percy Smith\u2019s microscopic movies (Minute Bodies<\/em>, 2017) followed. In between, The Waiting Room<\/em> (2016) arrived crackling with world grooves and sounds, represented here by the tense soul of \u201cWere We Once Lovers?\u201d and the hushed spoken-word reverie of \u201cHow He Entered\u201d.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work with Claire Denis continued to flourish on Staples\u2019 soundtrack to her science-fiction film High Life<\/em>, from which the delicate \u201cWillow\u201d appears. Three years on from The Waiting Room<\/em>, the band reconvened on a mission to make a meaningful return. The result was No Treasure but Hope<\/em> (2019), where \u201cPinky in the Daylight\u201d bathed the band\u2019s purest love song in pure, radiant melody.Distractions<\/em> (2021) followed, opening new avenues of exploration, while tender new film song \u201cBoth Sides of the Blade\u201d consolidates and stretches their collaborations with Denis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Staples and Boulter, recent projects have brought with them the promise of an open page: a pointer to futures as yet unwritten. \u201cI think there\u2019s always that feeling that there\u2019s something you haven\u2019t quite grasped yet, musically,\u201d says Boulter, pinpointing the twinned engines of yearning and ambition at Tindersticks\u2019 core. Meanwhile, Past Imperfect<\/em> honours how they entered. It is the sound of an uncommonly ambitious band always seeking new ways to connect with their songs, rediscovering themselves as a unit at every turn so that everything familiar about their music sounds fresh again. Always, of course, by nobody\u2019s measure but their own.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the greatest things I feel in approaching this milestone,\u201d says Stuart of the band\u2019s 30th<\/sup>, \u201cis that all of the mistakes we\u2019ve made are our mistakes. If there\u2019s something wrong, there\u2019s something wrong because we decided in the moment that this is what we should be and we physically made it that way. I\u2019m kind of proud of that. We\u2019re still here, we\u2019re still connected, we\u2019re still pushing and it\u2019s been totally on our own terms. I can\u2019t really think of many other bands that are in that situation.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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