Waiting For The Moon

Throughout their decade together, Tindersticks have never written conventional love songs. You will probably never hear one of Stuart Staples’ crooned crises on radio between the hours of 7am and 9pm: this kind of raw emotional exorcism neither amuses bored housewives nor appeases eager advertisers. Plus ça change, plus ça meme chose, as the man might mutter.
This year’s variant takes band and audience even further along the route to mainstream acceptability, without compromising on the poetry, the poignancy or the pathos that made us fall in love with them all those years ago. “My hands round your throat/ If I kill you now, well they’ll never know” sings Staples on the opening ‘Until The Morning Comes’ and he has never sounded more like Leonard Cohen in his life: hardly the stuff of cheery breakfast shows.

‘Say Goodbye To The City’ is a sonic masterpiece. Truth be told, it’s more like a painting than a song, bringing to life the vibrancy and oppression of a pulsating modern urban stronghold, with broad brush strokes of brass and strings augmenting the band’s luminous pastels.

‘4.48 Psychosis’, based on Sarah Kane’s posthumously staged play of the same name, owes more to the driving force of Gift-era Velvet Underground than their usual soul-brothers of Cave, Cohen and Brel: a tortured, distorted guitar-line forming the backdrop for Staples’ unnerving vocal performance. ‘Sweet Memory’, the title track and current single ‘Trying To Find A Home’ are vintage ‘Sticks, Staples straining to contain the passion of the lyrics inside melodies that wring bittersweet melancholy from every note. Similarly, the cinematic ‘My Oblivion’ treads familiar turf – you can almost visualise the bedraggled crooner pouring his heart into beer bottle and ashtray in a Parisian bar. ‘Sometimes It Hurts’ is a gorgeous duet between Staples and Lhasa de Sela, who sounds not unlike the great Tinita Tikaram.

Elegant moreso than elegiac, stately rather than under-stated, glorious not gloomy, this is a robust collection of truly beautiful songs from a band at their creative and emotional peak.