Tindersticks

In America it was the moment grunge exploded; on this side of the Atlantic, classic British-flavoured pop-rock was morphing into britpop, shoegaze was delivering its final gifts, and someone was about to coin the term post-rock. Feverish years, those early Nineties - perhaps the last in which you could still pin down relatively coherent "scenes" and stylistic approaches.

And yet, in that very period, it could happen that between a Nirvana track and one by the Stone Roses, something completely different would turn up on "alternative" radio: the work of a band as expansive as it was obscure, devoted to recasting the refined songwriting of Leonard Cohen in a sinister orchestral key, fused with the sickly atmospheres of Nick Cave and a latent spleen, steeped in a decadent spirit and intoxicated by the fumes of alcohol and tobacco.

To achieve such a mournfully elegant result required an instrumental setup capable of balancing orchestral romanticism, "indie" spirit and melodic sensibility, as well as a vibrant voice able to revive, with a personality all its own, the splendour of the aforementioned Leonard Cohen and the allure of the French chansonniers, chief among them Brel and Gainsbourg.

The small miracle of bringing all these elements together in a single band and in a stunning debut album was achieved by this record, which revealed the crooner timbre of Stuart A. Staples and a group of musicians capable of painting endless shades of orchestral pop across a monumental twenty-one-track structure lasting nearly eighty minutes.

Slipping free of the formal conventions of a pop record, the work's intricate structure goes hand in hand with an extraordinary expressiveness filtered through the existential anguish of the lyrics, perfectly supported by a rare interpretive depth and the band's relentless shifts in register, moving effortlessly between hushed acoustic phrasing, restless dissonance and refined chamber-music pièces.

The album is at once a fresco of crepuscular melancholy and a collection of songs crafted with pinpoint melodic precision, both in its intimate, minimal passages and in its more frequent bursts of orchestral grandeur, which are never cloying or self-indulgent, but marked instead by careful lyricism and restless instrumental flourishes. Indeed, there is no sugar-coating or self-satisfaction across the twenty-one tracks that make up the record; its underlying darkness is, if anything, reinforced by the recurring dissonances of the strings and sudden electric incursions, often interlocking with harmonic surges heavy with aching pathos.

Aside from the shy but sinuous uptempo swing of the opening "Nectar", the record's first stretch offers a dazzling showcase of the style and gripping storytelling qualities of Tindersticks. Alongside the first of the three instalments of the "serialised" track "Sweet Sweet Man" (whose recurring refrain, "a sweet sweet man like me, I can only bring you the misery", sums up Staples' poetics on its own), we move with studied nonchalance, almost without an emotional break, from the velvety claustrophobia of the trumpet and the sudden electric spasms of "Tyed" to two truly emblematic songs, "Whiskey & Water" and "City Sickness", anguished hymns to surrender into an aching solitude, a melancholy so deeply rooted in the soul that it seems almost longed for and savoured with relish. These are among the most poignant and immediately striking songs on the whole album, in which loneliness and inner unease blend into the inextricable darkness ("the light is just a memory to me now") of a public and private isolation, whose tension is only partly dissolved by Staples' seemingly unshakeable composure. Likewise, the pairing of orchestra and surfacing electric distortion powerfully embodies the suffering and surprising grace of "Milky Teeth" and the total surrender to feeling that radiates from "Jism" ("If she'd have known, she'd have shown me in/ I need to taste her pain for encouragement"), a folk-leaning track that unfolds between the anguished solemnity of the organ and repeated orchestral surges, culminating in a heartfelt final cry.

The album, however, does not live solely on moments of impassioned outpouring of a tormented sensibility; it also reveals the band's more romantic side, equally at ease applying melodic elements to more restrained games of dissonance ("Paco De Renaldo's Dream", the spoken word of "Marbles") and in the hushed introspection of songs that veer decisively toward oblique folk leanings and the refinement of intimate chansonnier songwriting. The record's more intimate side comes through even more strongly in its closing section, where — aside from the biting flamenco of "Her" — hushed, surrendering atmospheres prevail, as if the lights of the smoky club where Staples and company are playing had dimmed, and the din had given way to a handful of desolate background noises, the sole backdrop to the drunken musings on life and love found in the wonderful "Drunk Tank" and "Raindrops" and the perfect closer "The Not Knowing". Though less immediate than the abrasive orchestral ballads that open the record, these gentler, more intimate songs highlight Staples' melodic gift and the band's compositional quality, capable of imbuing sparingly structured songs with an unmistakable personal stamp, simply through string arrangements and the elegant, antique sound of David Boulter's organ.

Against the fleeting nature of alternative trends, against excess and the urge to impress at all costs, Tindersticks set the sober refinement of a timeless chamber-pop and the only seemingly ordinary nature of a fragile emotional authenticity, which finds its fullest expression in this romantic journey through the depths of the human soul, translated into songs steeped in great class, intensity and an uncommon sense of melody.

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05/01/2009