Tindersticks Edinburgh Queen's Hall 22 03 10
Title: Tindersticks - Edinburgh Queen's Hall 22 03 10
Label: Constellation\4AD
Cataloge No: N/A
Type: Live
Reviewer: Lucy
Date: 24, March, 2010
Trying to avoid the word 'cinematic' when talking about Tindersticks is like trying to avoid thinking about Mark and Lard's Tindersticks Party Album skit (an imagined record where Stuart Staples' mournful baritone tackles such good time classics as Russ Abbot's Atmosphere and Status Quo's Rockin' All Over The World.)
Now onto their eighth studio album, Falling Down A Mountain, and with their line up slimmed down to a core trio of original members, the band still teeter on the fine line between classy world cinema soundtrack and the mannerisms of the 'club singer'. The epic qualities of the title track of the latest album bear this out. Percussion takes the lead and the band seem to be deep into their own version of a jazz phase, although retaining a painstaking precision and clear purpose. Tonight they play the majority of tracks from the new record; Harmony Around My Table presents a looser limbed band than of old, but never quite finds the funk edge of their middle period. Peanuts starts out like a joke, but starts to sound like a Fred Neil ballad when Staples produces a harmonica.
Their closest musical relatives are probably The Bad Seeds, but they are less melodramatic, less driven and don't retain a wild card Warren Ellis figure. Their moments of theatre are subtler, quieter, and altogether more European.
Ennio Morricone and Curtis Mayfield vie for a place as the band's greatest influence and some of the newer material serves as an essay in the atmospheric power of the cello.
Can We Start Again, when it comes in the encore, is like a soul revue in comparison to the rest of the show, all handclaps and a tight soul shuffle. The closest thing they have to a hit - City Sickness – is a perfect synthesis of all their elements and it seems right that they save it for a second encore.
The band retain the essential qualities of stylish seediness established by their early records, being both scruffy and measured, like a second hand suit. Middle age suits them, like they've grown into themselves. Tindersticks have a strong identity all their own, a groove evocative of cheap red wine, shabby rooms and French films on TV at 3am.
Once again, many thanks to Michael Gallacher for the great photo.
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