Tindersticks - 'Waiting For The Moon' (Beggars Banquet)
4/5
By: Toby L
There's only so far you can go with bands such as Tindersticks. Their mere presence is a gift alone, but that they still remain as sonically endowed, distinctive and beautiful after all these years is a surreal treat.
It's that voice, surely; Stuart Staples' deep, throaty, UK Cave-ish warble... Or the stark band-arrangements - classy, calculated drums and bass, profligately coated in unobtrusive guitar-plucks... But, oh, the strings and trumpets...
Basically, it's actually all of the above that still cohesively contribute to the engulfing Tindersticks soundtrack - one that's seemingly more relevant with time and age, the endearing, sincere wash of 'Waiting For The Moon' serving as ample assurance of such a suspicion.
But it still challenges to a near-pretentious pedigree, which is half the fun. So, after the grand entrance of a sumptuous 'Until The Morning Comes' and brass-tinged 'Sweet Memory', there's '4:48 Psychosis': lyrics whose extraction derives from a play of the same name, as originally penned via late playwright, Sarah Kane, lushly enveloped in a heady, trippy surge of whining, classical violins and cyclic rotations of guitar-trappings and Staples' stone-cold delivery.
The title-track is far more innocent; nursery-rhyme xylophone and a solitary vocal colliding to tear-inducing wonderment, the antithesis of rage, and fitting pre-cursor to the gospel elevation of 'Trying To Find A Home' - the album's sorest, most vulnerable, delicate moment. Plus what with an exquisite, classic duet between Staples and French-Canadian chanteuse Lhasa De Sala on a stand-out 'Sometimes It Hurts' ('It's that old song that keeps running around in my head...') and the ambient, space-lounge of 'My Oblivion', majestically, the sextet's sixth album to date is as much inspired as awe-inspiring.
Some are doing this the old-fashioned way, dinner-jackets et al. Certainly, count Tindersticks amongst such a league. Their tireless musical etiquette sure makes for glamorous company.
Artists in this article: Tindersticks
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