The Tindersticks are a band for certain hours. Those of sometimes blissful and sometimes dark tribulations; of creaking guitars, pleading violins, strummed saxophone, caressed piano, striking organs and many other instruments fused into an orchestral sound. Some call it chamber or baroque pop, others see it as indie rock, which, at the time the British formation was formed, simply idiosyncratically defended itself against the dirty scrumpy sound or the chummy jingle sound that competed with it on the island in the early and mid-90s celebrated successes.
Unlike other protagonists of that time, the Tindersticks have remained with their sometimes very dramatic, sometimes stoic music to this day. With their heavy-bloodedness set to music, which also took on lounge relaxation when the big dramas were exhausted, but at some point derived all their self-confidence from cinematic and theatrical filigree, they are simply their own genre and therefore never become boring.
Who can say what these dirges are singing about, but their prosaic titles speak for themselves: “Tiny Tears,” “City Sickness,” “My Sister,” “Another Night In,” “Can We Start Again?” Sometimes It Hurts”, “Raindrops”, “Medicine”. At least the first two albums, as yet untitled, are for eternity, “Curtains”, the third album, is at least suitable for the anteroom of the Olympus of subtle mourning.
Quiet breeders with a sense of style
Tindersticks have been with me for half my life. I still remember hearing “Tindersticks I” for the first time like it was yesterday. Lying on a bed, as it should be. How I couldn’t believe my ears when “Whiskey And Water” was touched, how “Blood” was counted twice to unfold – and above all how I spontaneously jumped up from the sheets and danced sadly to “Jism”. surrendered to the trance of this music. As a teenager, I decided to live a life as a melancholic. Far from mental health discourses, this is also a visualization of art, film, literature and, above all, music that is dedicated to this breeding culture, expresses it and refines it. There is no such thing as THE melancholy (the world-weariness, the depression, the anxious fear, the suffering wrapped in cotton wool, especially from one’s own experiences of loss), there are many. The Tindersticks hit the tone of melancholy like no other band. Almost all other advocates of this mentality have remained alone on stage or only seek company from time to time.
While the creators of these minor-key fantasies, who always appear in noble garb, work more in the background, their singer Stuart A. Staples embodies the dandy, the rejected, the career doubter and affair juggler. A mumbler in a suit, with a cool look, a full beard and introspective nobility. When he’s on stage, he hardly moves. You can see that he takes refuge in his songs. A Man of Sorrows – that’s what you might think if you absorb these pieces, and by God that’s what they were made for! – sips his third whiskey in a harbor bar, looks pensively at the hazy water and brings a faded love back to life in his thoughts. Such types are called enthusiasts. There aren’t too many of them anymore since times have become more informal.
Of course you don’t hear the Tindersticks every now and then. They belong like a certain wine is opened because grief demands it or a special guest is visiting. For its haunting effect, this band primarily sets itself up in autumn and winter, when heartbreak hurts even more, the bad weather and the pale gloom force you into the heated room. I actually listen to them throughout the dark season. The Tindersticks are also a band that should be removed when the mood gets better and that doesn’t have to worry about being banned forever. The reunion will come.
For many years, a visit to a concert by the reserved British has been like a mass, in which reverent silence is required. You shouldn’t force the Tindersticks to go to festivals anymore, they’ve long been playing in the philharmonic halls with their tiny orchestral music. They belong there, and then again they don’t. Even after more than three decades of versatile sound paintings (as the surprisingly electronically plucking “Distractions” recently showed), these have not congealed into classical music. There always remains a dirty, chaotic core, an area that is wary of perfectionism because the thread of productive failure would then probably be lost.
If you talk to Staples about his music, you’ll get few clear answers. His songs have an introspective mysticism. Looking for meaning would be in vain, what matters is the impact and deepening of their emotional state. Just as the understanding of what melancholy is disappears the more often the term is used. As I said: There is no specific form of this escapism. It is not even clear whether it is fate (in the sign of Saturn, an outgrowth of the introverted temperament, genetic predisposition) or choice (not only beware of the wild outside world, but also put yourself in the care of a group of mostly gifted outsiders as a mental kinship , who don’t just look at life with bitter seriousness or trash it with infantile hedonism, but make hoping and striving and searching their most important concern).
Embodiment of humility and exemplary suffering
If you experience the Tindersticks on stage, you can also see what the common denominator of these ideas is when it boils down to a service the musicians provide to their audience: humility. This realization came to me when I once saw the band, freed from all the burdens of exuberance, at a kind of private concert in Berlin’s Kunsthaus Bethanien. They were playing an acoustic gig, something they never usually do. They minimized their songs, which maintain their tension by talking about small tears, but clothe the most useless, piqued suffering in extraordinary musical pathos. This had a strange, touching effect; an artful nudity.
Appropriately, the pictures of Staples’ wife and lifer Suzanne Osborne were shown. They are one of the Tindersticks. She even designed the cover of her first record. On display were her cloud paintings, painted at different times in different places. The band adopted some of them for the graphic design of their masterpiece “The Something Rain”. Here, on this evening, they symbolized the airy, processual, ephemeral and resurrection of the Tindersticks’ music. A formation that went through a variety of changes, lost members, gained new ones, always strived and therefore hovered above everything.
The Tindersticks are not survivors, they embody the stoic flow of things, the omnipresence of drama, mental and emotional movement. And a humility to convey this as an artisan in a form that is consciously artificial and therefore slightly otherworldly. The program of this music is described by the title of one of their most beautiful songs: “What Are You Fighting For?”
Staples doesn’t have a clear answer. But perhaps there is a spark of existentialist truthfulness in the way he says goodbye. Melancholics cultivate and cultivate saying goodbye, as Leonard Cohen did in many of his songs. Staples, the singer who always seems to have disappeared on stage, sometimes even dazed (profane minds would say: concentrated), says, no, whispers a short, quiet “Thank You” after many of his performances.
He perhaps means it a little differently than other musicians, because he not only whispers it to those who listen to him in the hall, he also addresses the spirits who give the Tindersticks’ music their soul, he thanks them for always being ready to kiss Muse, presents himself as a devoted conjurer of a sound art that also finds healing in the tragic.
Stuart A. Staples says “Thank You” like someone who falls on his knees before his Creator and asks forgiveness for his sins – while knowing for sure that he will receive it through what he does, what he gives to others .
The Tindersticks’ songs last a lifetime once you open up to them.
Follow the author of these lines if you like Twitter, Facebook and on his Blog (“Melancholy Symphony”).