Tindersticks – The Something Rain

Tindersticks have spent the last 20 years determinedly doing things their own way, cultivating a loyal fanbase willing to follow the twists and turns their career has taken over the years. While The Something Rain is the band’s ninth studio album, it marks the third record since they returned in a new incarnation with The Hungry Saw in 2008. Throughout the rebuilding process the band, now reconstituted as a five piece, has continued to push itself in different directions, most recently in the ambitious live performances of their Claire Denis soundtrack work.

While frontman Stuart Staples’ mournful baritone has long been synonymous with the band, The Something Rain is bookended by two tracks in which it doesn’t appear at all. The album begins with ‘Chocolate’, a ten minute spoken word piece narrated by David Boulter, laying out the minutiae of a bedsit romance replete with 50p bath meters, “winner stays on” pool games and late night taxi rides. The subtle backing kicks into life in a crescendo of out there saxophone before stripping right back for the tale’s denouement. In contrast, the closing piece, ‘Goodbye Joe’ is a brief twinkling instrumental with a low-slung bassline which brings things to a dreamlike ending.

Lying between these two tracks are another seven that find Staples’ distinctive croon in fine fettle indeed. ‘Show Me Everything’ is the kind of soulful, drawn-out melancholy that the band have always done well, while ‘Fire of Autumn’ continues in the same vein, adding motorik beats and squelching wah guitars to the mix. Elsewhere Staples intones tales of addiction around minimal strings and wearily strummed guitars on ‘Medicine’. While that track creates its mood through open and minimal arrangements, the frantic, obsessive ‘Frozen’ is the complete opposite. Stacking up layers of scratchy guitars, atonal horns and Staples’ vocals on top of a naggingly insistent drumbeat, the track careens forward at a pace, Staples intoning the phrase “If I could just hold you” repeatedly like a mantra, his vocals phasing in and out of clarity, with only elements of lyrics coming through before looping back and reverting back to the mantra once again as the layers of horns skronk around. It’s sinister, claustrophobic and makes for profoundly uneasy listening. While the tranquil, warm arrangements of ‘Come Inside’ go some way to resolving any unease caused by what has come before, there remains something slightly disconcerting about Staples’ invitation to “Come inside, we’ve been expecting you”.

The Something Rain finds Tindersticks in fine form, delivering a delicate combination of finely arranged brooding melancholy and redemption, whilst simultaneously allowing themselves the freedom to explore new ideas.