Tindersticks
Beggars Banquet
The title of this assured album sounds like a weapon from Itchy and Scratchy, a cartoon perfectly befitting the Tindersticks world, because its business as usual, with the Village People covers album remaining a long way off. Solo albums from singer Stuart Staples, since the last Tindersticks album in 2003, have apparently resulted in a new authority over their sound.
Following the sparse, piano-led ‘Introduction’, ‘Tomorrows Yesterday’ reminds us Nick Cave has no monopoly on barroom, gothic-gloom, although the organ simmers wonderfully, before spilling into a brass-underpinned chorus, with palpable relief from the customarily weather-hewn vocal from Staples.
The songs are delightfully ambiguous; such as the soft romanticism of the poetic single ‘The Flicker of a Little Girl’ complete with almost Motown backing oohs, or the heart shattering strings of ‘Come Feel The Sun’. It’s always sad to see great titles wasted, and ‘E-type’ is neither an ode to the car, nor typeface, rather an instrumental looking for somewhere to take its soft mariachi horn.
However with further highlights, of ‘Boobar’s echoed lead vocal, and the invisible duet of the lilting female vocal – all atmosphere, no words – of ‘All the love’, the reshuffled Tindersticks remain a shadowy presence, until the epic closer ‘The Turns We Took’. It’s magnificent, life-affirming pop that The Guillemots sometimes touch, and, finally the band arrives; it’s muscularly sublime. Over gentle backing vocals, string harmonies and tightly woven guitar, Stuart Staples narrates an enigmatic story, and it serves as the starting place to win new fans. TH
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