Disco de Tindersticks: “Tindersticks”

Tindersticks (I) is a landmark debut. I fell in love with this album upon first listening. It's a 70 minute journey into late night drunken stories of loss, love and revenge.

On first play, the vocals just sound like a mumbling and morose man drawing his last breath, but then you walk away and cannot stop thinking about that voice. Stuart Staples is probably one of the finest male vocalists since Scott Walker.

And it's to Mr Walker's canon that the Tindersticks belong. Their songs are epics. Dense and complicated. Full of treasures to be unearthed with each listen. You can liken them to Nick Cave as well, although I feel they are vastly superior.

One of the greatest debuts ever. Buy it.

Ah, Tindersticks, Tindersticks, Tindersticks....a sweet cocktail of melancholy, vitriol, seedy sexual practice and desperately tired, desperately lovely nocturnal music. Their debut is an uncut diamond, a sow's ear turned into a silk purse. Long, disjointed and shot through with despair and loneliness, it nevertheless lifts the spirit like few albums can. Stuart Staples' "unique" vocal style and the band's strange hybrid of folk and lounge somehow produce a sound which far oustrips the sum of its parts. The record gets off to a jumpy start but when "Blood" makes its abortive entrance, the album really digs its claws into you (albeit the claws of a knackered old cat you seem to have known all your life). "Blood" seems to be about erections (don't quote me on this) while "City Sickness" seems to be concerned with auto-eroticism. "Patchwork" is lovely and Marbles is marvellous. Later "Jism" is insanely jealous and darkly darkly, dark, while "Raindrops" has lost all hope whatsoever. "The Not Knowing" sees us at the end of a remarkable, surprising, entrancing journey, all gently medieval and sweetly vulnerable. See them live too - they make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up...

Tindersticks master the art of musical melancholy on this beautiful album (1st LP). Sorrow, anger, and tragedy have all found their way into music, many times with moving results. Tindersticks realize that the value of making emotional music is in the emotion that it evokes. The deep, sad vocals float above often orchestral music that flows effortlessly, as if it were not written, but merely meant to be. Don't throw on this CD in the middle of your party... Save it for quality time.

My musical tastes are wide-ranging and I am always looking for something different, something out of the ordinary to stimulate my interest. I stumbled across Tindersticks when I first heard Stuart Staples sing on the Lee Hazlewood tribute Total Lee!. I was instantly mesmerized by his delivery and so purchased a couple of Tindersticks CDs in order to get a better idea of what he is about. After a year of listening on and off, this CD has become a favorite both for me and for many friends.

Though some of the songs are a little quirky, the overall quality is enough to give this recording five stars. Here's what I like best: the driving, morose Whiskey and Water; the urgency of Milky Teeth; the rhythmic sway of Jism; the tense Drunk Tank; and the mysterious Paco de Renaldo's Dream. Through it all, Stuart Staples' original vocal style will keep your attention as will Tindersticks' instrumentation. He is sometimes hard to understand until you are used to him, and the one negative aspect of this CD is that no lyrics are provided in the liner notes.

Some have compared him to Nick Cave, but I don't see any resemblance except perhaps in the song lyrics. I can't really compare Staples and his band with anyone in my experience. Tindersticks is an original.

If you are musically adventurous and looking for something a little different from the SOS played on the radio, I recommend that you try Tindersticks starting with this CD here.

I noticed there had not been a review since 2007 so I thought I would share impressions of my recent purchase. The remastering is very good and I find myself playing the bonus cd of demos as much as the original album! At the right time TINDERSTICKS is a sublime musical experience. Not for all tastes perhaps, but it certainly is for me and a considerable number of others.