1993 all over again: 7 - Tindersticks

7. Tindersticks - Marbles

Over at the Melody Maker, they were crowning Tindersticks as the album of the year. It came 13th in the NME list; they went for Bjork's Debut instead. That difference alone suggests that maybe IPC closed down the wrong title, doesn't it?

You've got to admit, this is a wonderful lyric:

You saw your life as a series of complicated dance steps
Impossible to learn, they had to come naturally
Together you squirmed and wriggled
And I could only jerk along behind

[Part of 1993 all over again]
[Buy Tindersticks]

Mary Margaret O'Hara weekend: Peanuts

Another slice of supporting vocals from Mary - here, helping out the Tindersticks. There is another version of this video where, rather than a still of the cover, the song is laid over the top of footage from the TV adaptation of Charles Schulz, which feels like it's missed the point a little bit.



[Buy: Falling Down A Mountain
[Part of Mary Magaret O'Hara weekend]

Folkobit: Lhasa

Lhasa - the Canadian-based Mexican-American singer-songwriter - has died, it has been announced.

Born Lhasa de Sela, she started her career singing in bars of Montreal from her late teens. Her work combined Spanish, Mexican, American and French influences (she spent a lot of her time in France). Debut album La Llorona was released in 1998 and attracted a mixture of praise and awards (Juno Best Global Artist and a Quebec Felix Award, amongst others).

She spent some time touring as a member of a family circus-cum-caberet group before releasing a second album, The Living Road. She also found time to guest on a Tindersticks track, Sometimes It Hurts on Waiting For The Moon.

Her last album, Lhasa, was released last year - "charming in many ways" concluded The Independent.

Lhasa was just 37; she had been ill with breast cancer.

Downloadable: The Tindersticks

And, as a sample of the new album, The Tindersticks have released a free track, Black Smoke.

Great news from The Tindersticks

January 25th 2010. That's the release date for a brand new Tindersticks album.

Yes.

The band say so:

Here is a message from the band:

"Our last album, The Hungry Saw, was our first in five years. We didn’t really know what to expect on its release; we had just six concerts booked, and everyone was a little nervous…

That was April 2008. The success of those concerts, including the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Folies Bergere in Paris, took us all by surprise and led to seventy more shows in Europe and the US - ending with a beautiful summer’s evening headlining The Serpentine Sessions in Hyde Park in July of 2010.

In our ‘downtime’, we have scored 2 film soundtracks for Claire Denis: the much loved and critically acclaimed 35 Shots Of Rum and, due for release in the new year, White Material, which stars Isabelle Huppert. Somewhere during that time, we were also commissioned to create the music for the Louis Vuitton summer collection in Paris.

From those nervous beginnings a new unity and sense of direction grew. Where once our touring days were spent hanging around, killing time, now we found ourselves cobbling together acoustic rehearsals for new ideas in dressing rooms and venue corridors. There was a growing need to explore and we quickly started working in the studio.

Very soon this work became Falling Down A Mountain, our eighth studio album. Recorded at the band’s own Le Chien Chanceux studio in rural France and at ICP in Brussels between May and July 2009 and mixed at Le Chien’ in September and October.

With hindsight, The Hungry Saw now seems like an album made within the confines of what we knew; in making Falling Down A Mountain those boundaries became irrelevant.

The title track was borne out of a collection of moments; a dreamed idea recorded into a mobile phone in the night evolving into a spontaneous recording with the band, Terry Edwards’ trumpet (we didn’t play him the song, just gave him some clues, ran the tape and he played into the silence), singing with David Kitt and his great overdubbed guitar… All, more or less, made in one or two takes. Sometimes you just get lucky.

From the dream of building Le Chien’ three years ago, this is the first recording that gets close to what we have been looking for and gives all the effort some meaning.

The album ran on from there in many different directions, but always with a shared feeling between all the musicians and a sense of discovery towards the ideas. Highlights were many and varied: singing a duet with Mary Margaret O’Hara; new additions to the group in the shape of Earl Harvin (drums and vocals) and David Kitt (guitar and vocals) brought with them new colours to the music, and their voices combining with bassist Dan McKinna’s realised a long dreamt of “vocal section” within the band. In addition, Jo Fraser and Andy Nice, who have played a big part in our soundtrack work, provided some great flute and cello moments.

We hope you enjoy."

Quite a lengthy quote from a press release, but worth it, I think.

Tindersticks rekindled

There's something wonderful in the Tindersticks having just one MySpace friend - and that's Tom, who nobody really likes. The site is hosting a stream of a track from the first-album-in-half-decade, Waiting For The Saw. That's due at the end of April.