Tindersticks are industry veterans, now entering their second quarter-century as a band. Their latest album, No Treasure But Hope, arrives as its precedents: followed by a small but ardent fanbase. Musicians will cite the band as beloved influences. Among general listeners, however, they've never achieved a takeoff. Too artful for the charts, not weirdy-weirdy enough for the avant garde, Tindersticks perfectly define a niche act.
Their work conjures ancestral spirits from the annals of music history, drawing on lounge jazz, crooners and doo-wop. Understated production provides the base on which they construct their melodramatic fables. Everything about this band should be cheesy — but cheese is the very thing which, with every release, they dodge. Steeped in love for their forebears, Tindersticks are plaintive rather than parodic.
Whenever things threaten to get ropey, like the beginning of 'Trees Fall', the band yank us back on course. What resembles a Police demo in its first half unfurls at its mid-point in a gorgeous, brass-buoyed explosion.
And thankfully retained is the ineffable sadness of crooner music. 'For the Beauty' opens this album like a fairy-tale, but its delicate piano melody is soon undercut by dark, depressive lyrics. A sombre tone settles on everything that follows. 'Pinky in the Daylight' feels like Sinatra bellowed from a crackling PA into an empty Butlins bar. Blank walls spotted all colours by an impotently gyrating disco light. The stage for confessions of lonely, luckless drinkers.
This is all less dour than it might sound. Tindersticks are isolationists, but they're far from playing to an empty room. Their interiority in an increasingly performative and politicised world feels like the only protest left. Anchored by their own courage, Tindersticks have refused to engage with anyone's bullshit.
No Treasure But Hope will be released on Nov. 15th, and can be pre-ordered here.
Words by Andrew O’Keefe