We all know the obvious by now - that this band of 30+ years is perpetually underrated. Fortunately that hasn’t shaken Tindersticks’ belief in their own creative power, or how confident they are in the outcome. Success is in the eye of the beholder.

SEASON 11, EP 3: tindersticks & The Art of the underrated Band

Great bands and great records shouldn't come down to a competition, but by way of bringing it to your attention, Tindersticks’ Soft Tissue was my choice of 5th best album of 2024. I’m touched that Stuart Staples seems genuinely pleased to be on the list.

Alexi Petridis’ review of that record in the Guardian was so good I read it a few times. 

“If the overall message seems to be about noticing beauty in small things as a bulwark against the ghastliness of 21st-century life”.

It captures the mood of that album in precious few words. I found myself drawn into Soft Tissue…seduced by it really. From the opening song, New World, and its topline “I won’t let my love become my weakness” it got me, and the rest of the record buried itself into my brain even though I couldn’t pinpoint why. But as Stuart Staples attests, the best music connects with us in a way that is beyond analysis:

“If a record sets things off, gets you searching for something or looking for meaning, then it's doing its job. If we understand it too much, it's kind of dead, whereas if there is mystery to it, space to try and understand it, then it’s alive”.

Tindersticks music is beyond analysis but that hasn’t stopped me consuming everything written about the band over the years with almost as much hunger as their music. Sometimes it's a search for meaning, and sometimes a desire to understand why others are similarly drawn into the band’s work. What makes them such a well kept secret? In the book Long Players, author Eimear McBride’s essay on ‘the second Tindersticks album’ (the band is rare in every sense, including the dubious accolade of being a band with two self-titled albums, the debut and its follow-up). 

“There’s a true, if disconcerting, magic to the three way wedding of the album’s beautiful, intricate scoring, the cigarette-stained, shame-filled intimacy of the lyrics and Stuart Staples’ deep, dark, world-weary singing voice”. 

If the best artists create a world in which their work can come alive and their fans can escape from the humdrum of life and the worries of the world, then Tindersticks are the perfect example. But beware those who enter, this world is not perfect and to overuse typical adjectives, it is dark and as McBride attests, disconcerting. It’s also strangely comforting. That Alexi Petridis review captures this well too:“Tindersticks exist in their own world, untroubled by the vagaries of musical fashion, at one remove from everything else”.

The devotion of energy to the work is where Staples’ efforts go. It wasn’t always thus. Like any other band that creates music that deserves an audience, Tindersticks took on a quest to find that audience, especially in the early days. 

“We were so sure about ourselves, we turned away from what we had tried to break into…the gatekeepers, sending demo tapes to A&R people and chasing people. As soon as we stopped all that, we started to get noticed”. 

Noticed they were. The second Tindersticks album and its follow up, Curtains, were critically acclaimed, featured by alternative radio and even crept into the UK album charts. The former reached unlucky no. 13, the latter attracted the attention of Island Records, which signed the band for their fourth album Simple Pleasures. For a time, Tindersticks looked as if they may even become ‘popular’. Alas, the limelight quickly became more a kind of twilight - so very Tindersticks. We all know the obvious by now - that this band of 30 years is perpetually underrated. Fortunately that hasn’t shaken their belief in their own creative power, or how confident they are in the outcome. 

“There are so many ways to define success, but in the music business it boils down to commercial success. Frank Albach spent his life exploring the ideas that fascinated him on a daily basis. He died with his paintbrush in his hand, that for me, is success. To be here. To be connected and engaged at this point, after 30 years, that’s success to me”. 

Success is in the eye of the beholder then. Tindersticks’ soundtrack work is a notable factor in the career of the band of course, including six films (or 10 if you include Staples solo work) so far with French Director Claire Denis. In each case, the signature Tindersticks sound is present, but each with a subtly different palette of sound & colour, very much at one with the films in question. 

“It feeds into our process and what we do next. It’s never easy or comfy but it is refreshing and takes us to a place we would never have gone to. Each project leaves you a bit changed from it”. 

This coming together from a wider set of collaborators has been a learning curve for Stuart Staples and his band, but it has set them apart too, very much down to those qualities described in the Eimear McBride’s quote, especially in the intricate scoring. With a full string section present, this is just one reason the forthcoming Royal Albert Hall show will be a very special evening with Tindersticks. If you like (un)pop music with an atmosphere, it's one you don;t want to miss. I look forward to seeing you there…

Tindersticks play London’s Royal Albert Hall 17th March 2025. Soft Tissue can be purchased on Bandcamp.