It has to be hoped that Stuart Staples’ songs for Tindersticks aren’t a reflection of his actual life experiences. No-one really deserves that much rejection.
For over 30 years, Northampton’s terminally disappointed romantics have been ploughing a furrow as the go-to soundtrackers for failed relationships and doomed flirtations. In fact, they’ve made their own, a place where understated and laidback grooves meet claustrophobic and melancholy vocals that never quite descend into self-absorbed moping. So it is with Soft Tissue, where Staples moodily intones that “I won’t let my love become my weakness” during “New World”, while noting that “Your silence is worse than what you might say” on “Nancy”. Over woozy and nocturnal narcotic sounds, he claims that “my love is in flames” in “Always the Stranger” and that he “turned my back and struck out on my own” on “Turned My Back”.
Tindersticks certainly make music for listeners who are in the right mood – which in the case of “Always the Stranger”, with Terry Edwards’ mournful trumpet and Dan McKinna’s cinematic string arrangements, is probably on your own with a glass of something strong to hand. It’s surely never going to encourage a room of people to get up on their feet and cut a rug. However, the sounds on Soft Tissue aren’t stuck in one gear. Staples’ duet with Gina Foster on “Turned My Back” is sparse but beautiful with a dash of Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes about it, while “Don’t Walk, Run” has a seductive but understated funkiness about it.
Tindersticks don’t come across as the most jolly of people but Soft Tissue involves no wallowing about in never-ending wretchedness. Their songs are far too poetic for that. However, it seems unlikely that they are in any rush to make any dramatic changes to their sound either.
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