Music > Album Reviews

Tindersticks - Distractions

28/01/21

Well, I would never have thought that some 28 years on from first encountering Nottingham’s Tindersticks courtesy of their self-titled debut album that they would one day attempt to go all DISCO! But that’s just where the opening track Man Alone (can’t stop the fadin’) starts to take you, all 11 minutes and 7 seconds of it. It’s got a real XX style dance feel to it and it works just brilliantly - right now there is a very unlikely sound coming out of my speakers, one that I certainly wasn’t expecting at all. It’s absolute genius.

I saw them appear in the fine city on that debut tour at Norwich Arts Centre back in 1993 and they were quite mesmerising that night - I then somehow lost touch with them after their second album.

Back then they had a very unique and refreshing sound about them and all these years on, it’s still very much intact. This is their 13th studio album and has just seven tracks, but it’s the quality rather than the quantity that’s on offer here. It is just very beautiful indeed, I Imagine You is sumptuous as Staples whispers, “Hello Mrs Wilson, with his cat on his lap. He watches the TV and doesn’t cry or get angry anymore”!  

There is also a cover of Neil Young’s A Man Needs a Maid, which also has Gina Foster on vocals, they sound fabulously charming working together as a duo, it really does work.

But it’s Tue-Moi that is a standout track for me. It's a very dark and haunting song full of emotional outpourings about the 2015 terrorist atrocity at the Bataclan, France and is sung in French as Staples explains, “That whole time hit me hard, just knowing the smell of the place, how it feels to be on stage there, made me feel very close to it”. As if the air wasn’t cold enough outside just now, this leaves a real lasting chill running down your spine on this freezing cold January evening.

The closing track Bough Bends is 9 minutes and 30 seconds long, and closes the album just perfectly with its gorgeous piano and ensuing birdsong towards its finale in the closing 60 seconds. 

Stuart Staples' vocals remain as fresh and distinctive as ever while the band's atmospherics are just awesome. It’s still a very dark and smoke filled atmosphere in the Tindersticks camp, but it works just brilliantly. What a joy of an album. It is fair to say that we have been well and truly reconnected.

9/10

Distractions is released on February 19th 2021