The Tindersticks' Second Interview
IT WAS straight out of Reservoir Dogs. Six men, all in black, most in suits, lope onto the stage, a cigarette nestling between fingers or dangling from the side of the mouth. You half-expect them to open with 'Stuck In the Middle With You' and drag out a member of the Garda Siochana from the side of the stage with a gag in his mouth and the contents of an extra-large can of Castrol GTX dripping from his fettered uniform.
It is way past midnight after all and I have downed the odd pint of stout noir but there's a palpable sense of nocturnal menace about the Tindersticks which is even more striking when they're pounding away on their instruments within shoe-shining distance of you on the stage of the Olympia. It is an awesome experience. This edgy, almost dumbstruck mood spreads throughout the hushed stalls, broken only by bursts of cavernous applause.
What on earth did Stuart Staples make of all this? Is this the norm for Tindersticks concerts?
"It's strange playing in a seated venue. It was only the third time we've done it. I like the idea that we play in front of people sitting down but I don't like the idea that people don't seem to know how to react to music when they're sitting down and it ends up being very reverential. When we did that show in Dublin, I was told before the show that a lot of people would get drunk and go down the front and get rowdy but everyone was really quiet and I was hoping people were going to be a more aggressive. I don't like silence.
" I've been to gigs where bands expect you to shut up where we always think that the best feeling is when everybody is really noisy and finishing it with silence 'cos you actually make them shut up, rather than people feeling they have to, full stop. We never expect that. Cork was a bit more wild and a bit more packed and sweaty."
WHATEVER the surrounds, Tindersticks have had fawning live reviews as intimate bedfellows since they first emerged from their whiskey-sodden
late night bars and smoke-strewn cafes, ambled through those rain-soaked city streets with a black cat scampering across their path and hailed an old style London taxi cab, directing the driver to take them to that late-night smoke-filled whiskey bar called fame. There, I'm glad I got that out of my system. Now I can get on with the interview. The Tindersticks were begotten, not made, out of the ashes of The Asphalt Ribbons in Nottingham and released just one single on the
Manchester-based label Intake before their current, glorious incarnation took shape after a strategic move to Blighty's capital. Do they feel a move down south was essential to their prospects of success? "It wasn't going to London to try and be a success," explains Stuart, "it was to go somewhere different to find people to play with because the music scene in Nottingham was - I don't know if it still is - really, really insular. When we needed to play, we'd have to recruit a drummer who played in three other bands. When we came together, the six of us now, it was something that was moving forward together."
So you found that incestuousness stifling?
"There's just not many drummers and bass players. The only people who'd go and see bands in Nottingham were people in other bands," smirks
Stuart.
The first two Tindersticks singles, 'Milky Teeth' and 'Marbles' were released on their own Tippy Toe label, but it wasn't really until they launched their first eponymous album on This Way Up that the sextet were booked into the hotel of Rave Reviews and given the five-star treatment. And it's not hard to see why: Tindersticks was a slow-burning, sumptuous masterpiece, with a grand, baroque feel to it that managed to weave its disparate parts, now deafeningly quiet, now quietly deafening, into an integrated whole, each reflecting the record's breath-taking vision. What a debut!
Was/is it not tempting to sign to a major label, given the degree of interest in the band or do Tindersticks see themselves as one of the last keepers of the indie flame?
"It has always depended on the people we work with rather than money," affirms Stuart. "We don't have to sign to a major 'cos the people who disribute our records in England are the same people who distributed our first single - which there were 500 copies of. They seem to be doing alright.
We do take advice from the people in our record company. It's not like a shut door."
Have the experiences of a band like The Stone Roses, a sobering example of the perils that can be encountered in the cut and thrust of record
company politics, made you sceptical about signing to one of the conglomerates?
"It made me very sceptical about getting involved in a long court case!" retorts Stuart displaying his dry, underplayed wit. "It's a bit of a shame really. I don't think bands should have to go through that."
There were, of course, a few who did not shower Staples and his merry men with Tinder loving care, summoning the ghosts of Leonard Cohen and
Nick Cave And The Bed Seeds (with whom Tindersticks have sunk many a Bushmills on the road) as witnesses for the prosecution. How do they plead?
"Yes, I'm sure they were influences. There's hundreds of influences but I'm more influenced by a certain kind of successful piece of music no matter what it is and how it affects me. It doesn't really matter who did it. There's no sort of blanket policy to it," answers Stuart.
Well, who has most helped shape your sound?
"I think probably every good record I've heard since I was twelve years old. I don't think there's any one major influence. But in terms of modern stuff, it's more people you wouldn't expect like Pavement and Flaming Lips."
Cripes! Does this mean we can expect to see Tindersticks Lollapoloozing around with the likes of -"- Smashing Pumpkins? No (laughs), it sounds horrible. I know people who've done it. It doesn't sound like my cup of tea at all."
You're not a hotel bedroom-smasher then?
"Not really, no."
What is it about those bands in particular that attracts you to them?
"It's just freedom. If people go their own way and have that freedom towards their ideas, you don't automatically understand it and in that way I get
something more out of it. It's always been the music which has got freedom within it that gets me, whether it's the Velvet Underground or Tim Hardin."
Does it not therefore frustrate you to constantly see the words 'Leonard', 'Cohen', 'Nick' and 'Cave' crop up through your press clippings like an unwelcome ex-girlfriend.
"No, I always think that not many people see more than one aspect to what we do and it just makes you think it's a bit of a shame really. It's good
when you're in situations where you actually meet real people who come to the gigs and they do get more than rainy London streets and all that kind of stuff out of it; but also get the sense of humour and the lightness. A lot of people just concentrate on the supposedly depressing side of us."
Like the NME's 'Fun With Tindersticks' series? (which had sad clown's faces drawn on to the the band members' mugs with dialogue underneath
depicting our heroes as, well, not very exciting, unhappy-go-unlucky types. Picture Steve Davis writing a 2000-page thesis on the evolution of the
Romford railway system. In Latin).
"We thought they were really funny. A couple of them were like conversations we'd actually had!" laughs Stuart, striking a self-deprecatory note. "We can't be worried about things like that. You've just got to do what you do. All that side of it doesn't make you feel particularly comfortable. It's just totallysecondary to what you actually do. It doesn't really matter. As long as we move forward and are excited about what we do, then not much can takethat away from us. If we get bored then we're in danger of splitting up."
TINDERSTICKS are a rare phenomenon in the current musical landscape in that they genuinely play by their own rules. They accept that there are certain constraints and must-do's in the business, but they also know that that's the same no matter what job you're doing. They're notorious for being aloof and stand-offish in interviews and this has riled those scribes in the upper east echelons of the music biz who are so used to bands
grovelling and prostrating themselves at their door in ever more desperate bids for those precious column inches that they almost don't know how to cope with groups who waltz to the beat of a different drum-kit. There is a sense in which Tindersticks, by staying in their wine bar, lighting up another Marlboro and ordering more coffee as the waitress sweeps the floor etc. (it's always 3.00am in Tindersticks' world), were seen to be professional party-poopers who dared snub the very people who offered them their lunch ticket, and if they ever did turn up, they'd be the ones sulking in the corner, casting a cold eye on the whole proceedings, rolling another. . .
Such a low-profile approach is in keeping with the whole tone of the music. Stuart's voice is so reserved, so leaden down that it just about stumbles out of his mouth, almost reluctantly forming the words that go to make up some of the most beautiful songs of recent times. They're songs that only come out after dark, they exist in that time when you've had a bit too much to drink and start confiding truths you thought you'd never tell.
It's not surprising that their authors are loathe to give the user-friendly track-by-track guide to the new album and allow such moments to go under the scalpel. Does Stuart find the whole rigmarole exasperating?
"It comes with the job. If people think we're awkward it's because we don't do things that people think we automatically should do. It's totally alien to our personalities."
So you're slightly uneasy with the whole interview process?
"Well it's not so much that. I mean there's no point in making records if nobody knows they're coming out. It's just a case of trying to be as
comfortable with it as possible."
You mentioned that "rainy London streets" image of the band earlier. Do you find this trademark that you've been saddled with disconcerting?
"It's disconcerting if you put any store by what anybody writes about you - but I don't really, so people can write what they want. I just don't think you can let things like that bother you too much. It's just professional opinions, people being paid to think up an angle. It just boils down to being lazy really."
So you're happy to remain outside of that whole Camden muso scene?
"Very happy to remain outside. It's not something that affects me. It's got nothing to do with my life. We make records and hope people like them and get something out of them."
It becomes apparent over the course of the interview that the most accurate explanation for their reticence is also the simplest, so simple, in fact, that it probably never occurs to the vast majority of those who worry about such things: they're actually quite shy. It's not some manufactured attempt at being mysterious, a pose struck in the name of cool, it's just that they're not naturally disposed to shooting off about every topic under the moon or bellowing out slogans at award ceremonies.
Of course, The Tinders have taken a lot of stick for their besuited, sartorial elegance shtick, causing some to raise the odd suspicious eyebrow and
label the Nottingham Six as but sheep in slick clothing. But surely the extent to which they do or do not deliberately foster such affectations is a complete irrelevance in an industry where, as Billy Bragg says, even not having an image is an image in itself. Besides all this seems a rather
pedantic sideshow when you've actually let your ears bathe in the unreasonably rich and luscious waters of The Tindersticks' Second Album. It's
certainly not a masterpiece. It's better than that. To call it ambitious would be like saying that Shakespeare was pretty nifty with the quill or that the Man From Delmonte has a wee crush on oranges.
Both hopelessly romantic and desperately ruthless, it dares to wrap up its squalid tales in huge, sweeping strings, bullish horns and trilling trumpets.
Staples sings of cynical lovers and burnt-out relationships but somehow it all sounds so warm, so life-affirming. It's the essence of melancholy and introspection and yet it's joyous and unafraid at the same time. Everyone who's heard it has their own favourite track: for some it's 'Tiny Tears', others prefer the opener 'El Diablo En El Ojo', 'A Night In' wins the day elsewhere, at the moment my favourite is 'Snowy'. But everyone is agreed that it surpasses even their debut. What does Stuart think?
"I think the quality of the ideas have got better. We've always had ideas of how we wanted to sound back then but we just weren't very good at fulfilling them. That's the big difference."
Both Stuart and Neil, the Tindersticks' guitar player (who has actually been present for most of the interview but who has slipped into the role of
independent observer for a large part of it) agree that the introduction of the full-blooded string section on the album was the primary factor in bringing those creative seeds to fruition.
"It still sounds like us. It's not taking any one direction in particular. The string songs are that much bigger and the abstract songs are that much more abstract," explains Neil.
"It just seems to have pushed out a lot with the sound," continues Stuart. "We've recorded it ourselves with Ian [Caple] who's done all our stuff and I think we're getting better at getting what we want."
Neil: "We didn't spend any more time in the studio. We still spent two weeks in the studio over a period of time and one week mixing it."
"We mixed most of the album at home anyway," confesses Stuart. "On the first album, on a track like 'City Sickness', Dickon would just stand there and play violin tracks over and over and over again - 40 times over - and we'd bounce them down 'til we had a string section but he eventually got his ideas down onto paper and got a full string section in. It's on about five tracks on the album. We've never been able to play 'City Sickness' live. All songs on the new album with a string section, we can play live."
Which they did, the band trying out their orchestral manoeuvres in two celebrated gigs in Glasgow and London which elicited mouth-foaming
reactions from bewitched critics.
"We just thought we'd have a go. The prospect of failure makes it exciting."
So is that why you only did two gigs, in case it didn't come off as you'd hoped?
"No, it's just too expensive!" says the 'Stick head, with a broad grin. "It's hard to co-ordinate thirty people."
You're not in danger of watering down that hard edge in your music with these string extensions, are you?
"Oh no, not at all. That was the last thing we wanted to do. I think a lot of people were surprised at the string shows, 'cos they were expecting it to be really kind of seeping and lush and some of it was but some of it was really disturbed because, as a band, there are those beautiful kind of times but there are also times which are really discordant and aggressive and we tried to rearrange the songs so that the strings took on that kind of role within them. For example, we did songs like 'Drunk Tank' that were just so much more aggressive with the strings arrangements on it."
TINDERSTICKS are currently embarking on a UK and European tour without the orchestra and hope to return to Ireland in July. However there is a
possibility that we'll get to see the symphonic version in September. But Staples says he doesn't want to get stuck in any one groove.
"It will go both ways. The gigs with the orchestra were great but we're looking forward to doing these gigs on our upcoming tour with just the six of us.
An orchestra can add things but it can also take away the spontaneity and the chemistry between the band so, hopefully we'll just keep things special
and do things that seem apt at the time.
"It's always good to move on. I think we moved on with this album and we're excited about the next one because of the scope that's come out of it and
where we can actually go. Things have always got to change, keep moving on."
Can we expect maybe a collaboration with Scott Walker, now that he's shaken off his hermetic tendencies ?
"It's not something I've given a great deal of thought to really. In fact, it's not something I've given any thought to at all! I don't think I've got any heroes or icons. There's people who you can appreciate for what they do but at the end of the day, they're just people."
So you won't be frantically seeking him out now he's out of the wilderness?
"I never like meeting anybody! I like meeting dustmen in pubs but I don't like meeting stars."