Dispatch from Chicago: Tindersticks at Epiphany, 3/12/09

I must now take a hot moment to thank whatever sucker sold Tindersticks‘ album Curtains to the Hastings in my hometown, shortly after the album came out in 1997. I came across it browsing the racks some bored weekend evening and snatched it up because I’d read a review in Mojo. I had no idea what I was in for. On that first track, “Another Night In,” a swell of strings ushers in a bass guitar, piano and drum set. The strings lock in to a swaying melody, a tired, sweet, last-call groove. And then this dude begins singing. His deep voice is half-murmur, half-croon; he sounds like he’s halfway asleep, his dreams choking him awake. Eventually, he’s able to groan out the reason for his fitfullness: For the love of that girl. It’s all curtains from there, beautiful, dark, smothering curtains.

Centering around the brooding, sparse baritone of Stuart A. Staples, Tindersticks songs are studies in being elegantly alienated and suffering in style. When I finally got around to watching all of the Sopranos episodes two winters ago, I was gratified that the Tindersticks song “Tiny Tears” was chosen by the show’s music editor to soundtrack one of Tony’s bleakest spells. The Nottingham, England, group mixes Beatles-influenced pop, lounge jazz, Spaghetti-western horns and art-rock cadenzas into a creeping, rising chamber-noir that is often too weird to be melodramatic. Whether you are indeed a down-on-your-luck writer on a gin bender in Paris trying to forget her or just want to feel like you are, Tindersticks has something for you.