Tinder Is The Night

Hard to believe, but Tindersticks are turning 21 this year. It was 1992 when the world first gasped in amazement at the musical majesty of these men in black, playing their bruised, beautiful music, part torch songs, part punk poets. And the voice behind it all, the black-as-soot baritone of Stuart Staples.

At the time, he had no idea that he’d still be writing, playing and recording as Tindersticks 21 years later. “We never thought in such grand plans,” he reveals, down a phoneline from his home in France. “It’s always been about this song, this idea that gets you to take a step forward. Then you might look behind you to see how far you’ve come but we’ve never really thought beyond that.
“It’s still like that,” he muses. “What keeps you going is an idea that’s in front of you that you’re reaching for, that drags you into the studio or keeps you awake at night or gets you out of bed.”
I wondered if it was a shock when he realised that it had been so long since that first eponymous album. “The biggest surprise,” he ponders, “is that maybe our band should have had a natural lifespan that maybe should have finished with the demise of the original line-up 10 years ago.”
It’s not that Stuart is wishing his band away. Far from it. “I’m surprised that for the second time in my life I’m in a great band again, which shouldn’t happen, I don’t think,” he chuckles.
Regrets, he’s had none really. “Any mistakes that have been made have been our own mistakes. I don’t think there’s been an instance when somebody told us to do something, we did it and regretted it. Decisions were made, records were made and they were always our decisions, our records. Even if some things stick in your craw, you learn from it.”
They’re about to release Across Six Leap Years, 11 Abbey Road re-recordings of tracks culled from their back catalogue, including their song-owning Odyssey cover, ‘If You’re Looking For A Way Out’, as well as an orchestral take on ‘Marseille Sunshine’ and the majestic ‘Dying Slowly’. So why revisit some past songs, some of which aren’t vastly different to the original recordings?
“I think each song had its own reason or was driven from a different point to be on the album,” he says. Some tracks, like ‘I Know That Loving’ and ‘Say Goodbye To The City’ revealed themselves on the road: “they were changing, evolving and becoming something that maybe they were always destined or you hoped they would become”. Other song choices were driven by Stuart “wanting to sing them by being the person I am now rather than the person I was then”, including ‘A Night In’ and ‘She’s Gone’, from the second Tindersticks album.
“Those two songs have stayed with me and I’ve sung them so much over the last 20 years that they’ve kind of changed in me,” he admits. “When they were written, they were recorded quickly. Now, they’ve had a chance to get inside me and connect with different times in my life.”
Having just released Singing Skies, a book of Stuart’s lyrics alongside paintings by his wife, Suzanne Osborne, as well as revisiting songs in the studio, I wondered if both exercises felt a little like cringily reading an old diary?
Describing it more as “like seeing an old photo of yourself with a bad haircut”, Staples admits that the book, in particular, which represented the first time his lyrics have been written down, was a strange experience “seeing them naked on paper for the first time”. Some of his songs didn’t make his own vetting system, however: “Some of them I love to sing, but I didn’t like them written down. It’s kind of a different, complicated process.”
Album cover art aside, Singing Skies is the first time Stuart has collaborated with his wife on a “a concentrated project, where we both had a certain responsibility towards what we’re making, which caused some big discussions,” he laughs.
Is that code for screaming arguments over the kitchen table?
“No,” he guffaws. “It never got to that. Although, we did have some things that we had to figure out.”
October sees Tindersticks embarking on the Across Six Leap Years Anniversary Tour, including a date in Vicar Street on October 24. Just don’t call it a greatest hits tour.
“I wouldn’t want to be churlish and say there isn’t going to be any of that,” he smiles. “It is going to be a retrospective kind of set, or two sets, really. I think it is important that we are challenged as well, that we’re edgy about it. There have to be moments of playing certain songs and relaxing and being easy with them. I also think there is music in our past that we haven’t played before and maybe this is the time that we should not be afraid of it.”
After that, he’s happy to see where fate brings them. “Everything we’ve finished has always pushed us to the next thing and it’s been an obvious step. I feel now is the first time we have some choices and I’m kinda resisting pinning that down. I want some time for us to be together and experiment and see where this thing wants to go between us.”

• Across Six Leap Years is released on October 14. Tindersticks play Vicar Street on October 24.