Tindersticks

Tindersticks have always stood out from other indie acts due to Stuart A. Staples’ rich, velvety baritone and their melancholic, heartrendingly moving songs. Their sound has deepened and developed over the last 40 years, and their most recent album The Waiting Room has been hailed as a work of genius. They’ll be playing it in full in Open’s beautiful Banking Hall this May as part of Norfolk & Norwich Festival, accompanied by a series of specially created films. I spoke to original member David Boulter about doing the unexpected and his love for John Barry.

You’re currently on tour in Europe..how’s it going?

Yeah I’m in Oslo! We had a day off yesterday, there’s a bit of a market outside and the sun’s shining. We just did three nights in Paris which went really well.

You were in a band before Tindersticks, Asphalt Ribbons. How did you meet initially?

It was mainly me and Stuart, but also Neil the guitarist was also involved in a different capacity. We met in Nottingham in the early 80’s, and if you were into a certain kind of music back in those days in a city like that you gravitated to a certain pub or club that everybody went to and you were all at the same kind of gigs at Rock City. You just saw the same faces and gradually met each other. I knew someone who knew Stuart, he asked me to join his band and it just grew from there.

When you listen back to your first recordings is it a happy reminiscence or do you just notice where you’ve developed to since then?

It’s happy, it feels like another world. We were still growing up and discovering new things at that point even though we were in our 20’s, our world was just Nottingham. We always felt different, like we were fighting against normality in some way so that was quite interesting. We always felt like there was something more out there and what’s made it really happy and memorable is that we got out of our Nottingham world; I’m not saying it’s a depressing place but I think we always thought beyond the horizon.

Have the subjects of your songs changed over time?

I suppose it has. Stuart’s the lyrics writer so they’re all very personal, and especially in the past few years as we mature and get older our perspective on how you see the world changes and the also the world changes quicker around us. We lose people and we see our parents die and that has a different effect on us.

At what point did you feel like being in Tindersticks was your actual job rather than a hobby?

I remember we moved to London at the start of the 90’s after we’d released two albums; we all worked in record shops. I’d had loads of time off work, we had a tour coming up and I realised I had to pack my job in as I’d already had like five weeks of holiday already that year, since January or something! I suppose it was quite sad in some ways because one of the best things about making music is that it’s an escape from your normal routine life, and as soon as that becomes your everyday life you have to find a different escape. That can be alcohol or anything else, and I went a bit crazy for a while but I’ve got to it now I think.

Your first few albums developed a very ‘Tindersticks’ sound, with strings and orchestra, but when your sixth album White Material came out it was very different, bare and tripped down. It’s actually one of my favourite of your works. What was the band’s mindset with this collection of tracks?

I think we were trying to escape what people expected from us. I think one of the reasons Tindersticks had a problem about 10 years ago was that we did seem to get locked into this idea that people had about us using orchestras and string arrangements. So for the last 10 years we’ve been trying to break away from that. White Material was a way to experiment a bit and that’s something we’ve brought into the way we make music even now. I suppose if you didn’t try to change things it would get too tedious and you’d just stop.

Tindersticks songs have a reputation for being heartbreakingly hauntingly sad but also have a real core strength to them. I always think of someone walking pensively in the rain under a streetlight. Is there a particular artist you listen to yourself when you’re feeling down?

For the past 30 years I’ve got really into soundtracks and one person in particular who changed my point of view about music was John Barry. I’ve become a massive collector and I suppose he’s the person I play most often, probably at least once a week if not every day.

When Stuart left to record his solo music did you think that was going to be the end of the band? Were you surprised when really it was only a short hiatus?

I worked with him on his solo albums so I guess for me it never stopped, it just changed. It wasn’t really a surprise..when we were working on his second album it felt pretty much like a Tindersticks record except he was writing all the music whereas usually we all contribute. That was the big thing that changed. It was another way of breaking away from what people expected from us.

You’ve had quite a few personnel changes through the years but you’ve always been in the band as well as doing some soundtrack work. What’s the most interesting thing you’ve done musically away from Tindersticks?