Tindersticks: “Kathleen” (This Way Up)

Rarely will you hear pop music as dark and as sombre as this cover of the great Townes Van Zandt number. Comparisons to Nick Cave are not unfair, nor would the mention of Tim Buckley, Richard Harris singing Jimmy Webb or even Nick Drake be all that out of place as Stuart Staples croons his way, lower than Lee Marvin, through an orchestral and saxophone-tempered black mood that is caught in its death-gripping essence by the most understated and succint descriptions, nowhere better exemplified than in the lines “Swallow comes tells me a dream/Said she’d like to know just what they mean/Feel like I could die/As I watch her flying by/ Ride the North wind down/To see Kathleen.” Will Stuart Staples become the Scott Walker or the Shane MacGowan of his time?