The Something Rainrelease date: Feb. 21, 2012
format: vinyl (LuckyDog10LP) / cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,94]
producer: Stuart A. Staples
label: Lucky Dog / City Slang - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Chocolate" - 2. "Show Me Everything" - 3. "This Fire of Autumn" (4 / 5) - 4. "A Night so Still" - 5. "Slippin' Shoes" - 6. "Medicine" - 7. "Frozen" (4,5 / 5) - 8. "Come Inside" - 9. "Goodbye Joe"
reviewed Mar. 16, 2012
9th studio album by Tindersticks released on Lucky Dog and City Slang shows the band continuing on the new paths that they sought out on the predecessor Falling Down a Mountain (Jan. 2010). Since then, new guitarist David Kitt has already left again, which now leave us with a more permanent quintet containing the three original members Staples, Fraser, Boulter, and the two newest members: Dan McKinna and Earl Harvin.
Finally, the band in its new configuration has succeeded in producing really well-crafted new material! It's not because they have been really poor, nor boring. It has only taken the band a few years after reorganising to establish a new favourable dynamic. At times the band has seemed as if stuck to a formula, trying hard to come up with new ideas without really being able to evolve artistically, and they have occasionally sounded like a mere copy of themselves. It has left a taste of something unsatisfying about their albums, although I have rediscovered their releases from 2003-10 and have had the pleasure to admit that they actually were better than my initial assumption had told me. 'They were so thoroughly original, so why did they stop making fascinating music?' was my thoughts after acquiring Waiting for the Moon in 2003, and the same sensation crept in with the two successive albums. There was like nothing... cool about these releases and an absence of a 'wow' experience! They then released the 5-CD box set, the massive Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009 album (2011), which is a bit of a demanding collected work of film music for Claire Denis. The best parts are Nénette et Boni and Trouble Every Day. As soundtracks, they all suffer from being made as accompaning material to something visual that is absent, and it may be a challenging experience listening through the music to films you haven't seen. The individual works also have a common ambient element, which does not always go hand in hand with Tindersticks - but that's just an opinion.
The Something Rain expands the band's repertoire in the most positive sense. It combines Tindersticks, as you have come to know them: the sophisticated and lighter grey-blue chamber pop, Stuart Staples' crooning, melancholic and deep vocals and then 'The Something' else: the embrace and inclusion of a strong bond to jazz.
It's the rediscovery of the aesthetically beautiful with a completely new fully formed jazz atmosphere, which is combined with the band's foremost qualities and in this way they open up to a music that simply tastes surprisingly new. And it's not just old wine in new bottles, but... Tindersticks vintage. Imho, this is one of the best releases of 2012.
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| Stuart Staples & Suzanne Osborne's joint book-project "Singing Skies" |
The front-cover is an excerpt from the joint book-project "Singing Skies" [review] consisting of song lyrics by Staples and screen printings by his wife, Suzanne Osborne [link], who made the series "A year in small paintings - Skies, Sep. 2010 - Sep. 2011".
