tindersticks – tindersticks

Great news. Our first tour dates for the autumn have been announced.
We are looking forward to visit some well loved venues but also some new experiences for us all.
Hoping to see there! x

tickets & details

New song - Falling, the light

The new album is finished and will be gradually revealing itself over the coming months.

All the songs have had their own unique path to being realised and finding their place on the album.
‘Falling, the light’ started its life with Dan at the piano, but that was just the beginning of its musical journey –
It slowly found its sound and balance in a strange and beautiful way.

The words were written quickly on a ‘South Eastern’ train during a visit back to London with all the memories that that city holds.
While much of the album is agitated and struggling for understanding, ‘Falling, the light’ is a quiet corner of some kind of solace and calm.

Felt work by Sidonie Osborne Staples

Great to announce these two special shows.

And with thanks to the Paris Philharmonie for the invitation to put this concert of image and music together.

With 10 films over 27 years to chose from it’s going to a challenge to figure out the set list and to play our music in many different configurations.

And to put all those Claire inspired songs together will be a pleasure – Trouble, Tiny tears, Both sides, Willow, Stars at noon, Put your love in me.

Hope to see you there x

tickets available here…
Auditorium de Lyon
Philharmonie de Paris

'Stars At Noon',the complete Original Soundtrack for Claire Denis’ Cannes Grande Prix winning film is out now!

We are excited for the Stars at noon soundtrack to be released today.

There was a real natural flow of the image and music growing together for this film.
After working under Covid rules for ‘Both sides of the blade’ it was a joy to be back in the studio, great musicians coming and going, a spirit of experimentation and adventure.

Our rhythm section Dan Mckinna and Earl Harvin are storming in this score.
Respect to percussionist David Pattman and organist Ross Stanley for their contributions. The first time that David has played with us since the score for ‘Trouble every day’ in 2001! Julian Seigel played some beautiful sax, Shanti Jayasinha the trumpet. David Okumu brought the mysterious colours only he can.

The freedom in this music felt like such and antidote to the confinement of the previous years and no great need for much conversation with Claire, just an easy flow – always a good sign!

Listen here…

tindersticks new single, ‘Stars At Noon’, out today!

To coincide with the release in the U.S. of the Claire Denis’ Cannes Grande Prix winning ‘Stars at Noon’ we give you the title song. We think it’s a peach!

The complete Original Soundtrack will be follow October 14th.

Watch the clip taken from the film starring Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn.

‘A slow-dance set to a swooningly gorgeous new song by Tindersticks is almost heart-stopping – the cherry on top of a surprisingly warm score’

– Indiwire

I stood in CDG, terminal 2, talking to Claire on the cell phone. She was preparing to leave for Panama to start filming ‘Stars at Noon.’

‘And of course I need the song for the dance scene for the shoot,’ she said.

‘What dance scene? Is it in the script?’ I replied.

‘It’s in the new version of the script.’

‘Ah, do I have the new version?..’

The line faded and I was left considering this, something that I expected to hit me in the months ahead but was suddenly all over me.

’Stars at Noon’ had been in Claire’s thoughts for a long time, maybe even 10 years. We have had many conversations, I had a strong feeling for it and half a song somewhere in my mind.

I remembered the great percussionist David Pattman, he played the bongos on the ‘Trouble Every Day’ score 20 years before. He was happy to hear from me and we quickly arranged a recording session with Dan on double bass and Ross Stanley on Hammond organ. We had a blast those days, taking the ideas apart, putting them back together in many different forms.

At the centre was the song ’Stars at Noon’ – I was pushing it to be slower and slower, until it only just grooved, just on the cusp. Finding that tempo was key for me and the final version was recorded live in one take. Julian Seigel arrived later and played the beautiful tenor sax line.

I sent a rough mix to Claire in Panama, they were having production problems and she said the song cheered them all up – I heard all the crew singing along in the background.

SAS

———————————-

“The Englishman is dancing with the American woman and he realizes it’s too much and apologizes to her. He can make love to her in a motel room because he’s paying her — but to dance with her is something else. Their love affair shifts into something very real.”

Past Imperfect - The best of tindersticks ’92 - ’21

30 years! This collection has been difficult to compile, but here it is. I have always felt we move forward in small steps (the occasional leap), at times we have been happy to slow right down and examine what is in front of us so thoroughly that we could appear static from the outside. But on the inside of this world, like looking down a microscope, it is brimming with life. We now get a chance, or are forced, to look over our shoulder to see how far we have travelled.

Past imperfect is in chronological order and split in to 4 sections / 2 halves – The first half being the original line up of the band with Al Macaulay (drums), Mark Colwill (bass) and Dickon Hinchliffe (Violin, guitar, string arrangements). The second half being the present day line up with Earl Harvin (drums) and Dan McKinna (Bass, piano, string arrangements).

Myself, Neil Fraser (guitar) and David Boulter (various instruments) are always present – We were born and grew up in Nottingham at the same time in similar circumstances, although we didn’t meet until music brought us together in our late teens / early twenties. Perhaps this binds us together.

There are 2 songs from Claire Denis films – ‘Tiny tears’ from Nanette et Boni (’96) and ‘Both sides of the blade’ from her latest film ‘Avec amour et acharnament’ (’21). There is also the version of ‘Willow’ sung by myself (rather than Robert Pattison who sang the version in ‘High life’ (’19)). Working with Claire, 10 scores so far, has had a great effect on the progression our music, always asking us to change shape and look in to the different elements of our music.

Another great effect on our music was the late and very great Lhasa de Sela. ‘Sometimes it hurts’ was the first duet we sang together. We went on to collaborate further and became great friends. It has become difficult to approach writing duets since her passing.

’92 – ’96 – City Sickness, Her, Tiny tears, Travelling light (duet with Carla Torgerson), My sister.

’97 – ’03 – Rented rooms, Can we start again?, Dying slowly, Sometimes it hurts (duet with Lhasa de Sela), My oblivion.

’08 – ’14 – Harmony around my table, Show me everything, This fire of autumn, Medicine, What are you fighting for?

’16 – ’21 – How he entered, Were we once lovers?, Willow, Pinky in the daylight, Both sides of the blade.

The limited edition box set comes with a double LP of ‘Live at Glasgow City Halls, 5th October 2008′

Stuart A. Staples, January 2022

tindersticks - Both sides of the blade - released January 17th, 2022

Written for Claire Denis’ forthcoming film ‘Avec amour et acharnament’ starring Juliette Binoche, it will be premiered at Berlin Film Festival on the 12th February 2022. The song closes the film.

This short is Stuart’s own visual take on the song (with a lot of help from his friends!).

Limited edition boxset / pre-order

Order the limited edition box set here via City Slang

Contents:

Past Imperfect, the best of tindersticks ‘92 – ’21 (coloured 2LP)
Live At Glasgow City Halls 5th October 2008 (coloured 2LP)
Exclusive 7”: A: “Both Sides Of The Blade” B: “For Those … “

New album ‘Distractions’ announced / Man alone (can’t stop the fadin’) released today,

Hello everyone, today we are announcing our new (and unexpected!) album ‘Distractions’. We are hoping you enjoy it. It’s an album made during tough times and now released in even tougher times for many. We cannot ignore the effect this has had on it’s making. Although..

We never had the opportunity to say thank you to you all for the experiences you gave us at the beginning of 2020. Even though we had to cancel so many concerts at least we were lucky to play so many before the confinement started. To feel the connection and energy between us all, even after all these years, took us a little by surprise. ‘ No treasure’ has so many great songs and it was a pleasure for us to play them for you. So many great evenings and a tangible growing momentum that was abruptly cut short (actually during the sound check in Bordeaux!).

This is where ‘Distractions’ comes from, all that energy needed to go somewhere. And even though it started an often frustrating process (recording remotely doesn’t work for us) we found a way and by July the album was sketched out. With restrictions lifted August was a frenzy of travelling and recording, the album was mixed in September.

The seeds of ‘Man alone (can’t stop the fadin’)’ and ‘The bough bends’ that open and close the album already existed at the beginning of 2020, though I had no idea where they were heading, come April they were leading the way, setting the tone for ‘Distractions’. ‘I imagine you’ was a new idea idea bounced between myself and Dan in our separate spaces. The cover versions of Neil Young’s ‘Man needs a maid’ and Dory Previn’s ‘Lady with the braid’ have been a long time coming, on our agenda for maybe 10 years with failed attempts behind them. Television personalities’ ‘You’ll have to scream louder’ was a moment of reaction to the events in the world in April and ‘Tue – moi’ was a song started from the Paris and Manchester attacks, always needing to be sung in French and, perhaps, this delayed it’s progress – I had to find the courage of my convictions!

And so, we are looking forward to you engaging in this new work. Hoping it helps pass some long evenings – whether sitting or dancing!

We also hope for and look forward to better times and to play our music for you again in person before too long.

You can pre order the album here

This song was always a journey but I wasn’t expecting it to be such a long one. We made a 6 minute version but it felt like it pulled off and stopped half way to its destination. This was the beginning of a long journey in itself, to find the route it needed to travel to complete itself. Probably the biggest challenge a song or piece of music has given us. It was delicate and slippery right up to the final mix – which lasted a week! The final song has a strange connection for me to the drum machine, bass guitar and voice combination of ‘Indignant Desert Birds’ – mine and Neil’s first band when I was 17.

It was important to me that the words of the song were not a coherent narrative, but passing thoughts along the way.

In the back of a London cab driving through the city at night is a very special space for me. It has a particular kind of aloneness. This fascination grew over hundreds of nights leaving the the studio exhausted at 1 am – Ladbroke Grove or St Johns wood, through the city and over the river to South East London in an almost dream state. This film for Man alone became a way of touching the city and that way of feeling both a part of and apart from it.

Take great care.

Stuart

New single ‘You’ll have to scream louder’ released today.

‘You’ll have to scream louder’ is a song of the Television Personalities from their classic album ‘The Painted Word’. This is our version, it is part of our forthcoming album ‘Distractions’ (more details to follow in the New Year)

Late may, early June, 2020 was a twitchy and angry time for many of us. There was a growing agitation inside of me.

I woke on a Saturday morning with no plans but just this fucking Television Personalities song going round in my head, it pushed me into the studio.

4 or 5 hours later I had made the basis of this recording, though I had to wait for windows of opportunity within our confinement to work with the band to bring it to a conclusion.

I have loved the TVPs since buying the Bill Grundy e.p. with its photocopied sleeve on one of my regular after school bus trips to the Virgin record shop in a basement on King Street, Nottingham.

Some years later, 1984, I was living around the corner on the 17th floor of Victoria Centre flats, they swayed in the wind. I was working a few days at a local record shop and The Painted Word was released. It became at the soundtrack to that semi-slum, those times. I was 19.

To be young in the early 1980’s there was much to be angry about, battles to be fought – Thatcher, racial and gender injustice – and (one of the motivations for this song) nuclear disarmament. Although we may not have thought those battles were ever won, we believed we had helped push things in a different direction, that changes were made.

In the spring of 2020 we were shown painfully that these battles are ongoing.

New EP ‘See My Girls’

Today we are delighted to release our new EP ‘See my girls’.
4 songs – ‘See my girls (edit)’, the great David Boulter instrumental ‘A street walker’s carol’, ‘Blood and bone’ and the original Le Chien version of ‘See my girls’.

The film for ’See my girls’ is a collaboration with Stuart’s daughter Sidonie Osborne Staples made from her continuous illustration of the songs narrative.
Sidonie also made the artwork for the EP and co-wrote ‘Blood and bone’ on which she also provides the lead vocal.

The EP is available digitally today. The 12” vinyl will be available at tour our dates from Gent (29th January) and in stores on 7th February.

A street walker’s carol

From the ‘See my girl’s EP
Written by David Boulter
Artwork by Sidonie Osborne Staples

Blood and bone

From the ‘See my girl’s EP
Written by Sidonie Osborne Staples
Artwork by Sidonie Osborne Staples

See my girls (Le Chien version)

From the ‘See my girl’s EP
Artwork by Sidonie Osborne Staples

No treasure but hope

Recorded over 6 days in Midilive, Paris. The album is released today, 15th November 2019. Our first Scorpio album and we wish it well!

We wanted to make something physical and human. Not constrained by clicks or grids or loops. Songs played into the air, captured in a moment, unique to that moment and how we felt and reacted to each other within.

You can read the words here

‘For the beauty’

Directed by David Reeve. Filmed at the recording session of the album at Midilive, Paris. April 2019

‘Pinky in the daylight’

Taken from the album ‘No treasure but hope’, listen and watch the film directed by Stuart.

“The chorus for ‘Pinky in the daylight’ came to me through the flapping canvas of the sun shade on the deck
of the old blue ferry leaving the island – A rare moment of contentment and calm. A simple love song in
complicated times.

I wanted to make a film that captured the beauty of the island and the beauty of Suzanne. A love letter in
Super 8 film.”

The first song, ‘The Amputees’

Watch the stop-motion animation made by Stuart, Neil and Suzanne.

Exhibition of stills from the film in Antwerp.

Super Limited 7” of ‘The Amputees’ + signed print with select bundles of album.

New Richard Dumas and
Suzanne Osborne colour portrait

From large format stills taken by Richard during the Paris recording sessions, then overlaid in the darkroom.

Suzanne used a traditional method of hand tinting the print with brush and photographic inks.

Exciting shit!