Tindersticks: "Tindersticks" (This Way Up)

The release of a debut double album with nearly eighty minutes worth of music must mean something. Arrant arrogance, perhaps? Or maybe just a certain confidence in the quality of your compositions? In this case it must be the latter that applies. Tindersticks’ eponymous debut is, at least, one of the finest releases this year.

The six-piece London-based band (originally a Nottingham group called Asphalt Ribbons) lie somewhere in the same sphere (although at the other end of the spectrum) as Gallon Drunk and Nick Cave; dark, brooding, a little murky, at times menacing, but simultaneously uplifting and energising.

‘Nectar’ opens the whole with slow, moody mumblings, leading into ‘Tyed’ with Terry (Higsons) Edwards’ weird jazz sax ramblings and those weighty trademark keyboards. Already things are looking pretty damn interesting. Tindersticks’ are eschewing fashion and fad, searching for their own unique place on the shelf.

By the time you get to ‘Blood’, five tracks in, they’ve found it and your ears can’t help but prick up with interest.

The simple, bare emotion that oozes from Stuart’s often unintelligible mumblings, musings and vocalisings (rather than ‘singing’).may prove one of the keys to Tindersticks’ glorious future. His voice wavers in between notes, rising in and out of keys in a beautifully affecting way that perfectly fits the persistent rhythms and interjections of brass, guitar and organ.

‘Piano Song’, naturally, has no piano, just gentle, affectionate guitar and a simple, domestic, vocal refrain (“Shut up, I’m thinking”) that leaves everything to the imagination.

And closing the album? What better than ‘The Not Knowing’, a late English summer of oboe and violin and another love story gone wrong – “The not knowing is easy...just don’t tell me for certain that our love’s gone away.”

It is hard to do justice in a handful of words to the twenty-one songs that make up Tindersticks’ debut. Hard to fully describe the depth and breadth of musical expression. Hard to explain how Stuart’s sombre tones tug you in until your heart is fit to break. Hard to explain how a bunch of rank outsiders from somewhere in the middle of England have succeeded in making what is probably one of the most gloriously affecting albums ever released!

It’s hard to explain. It just is!

• Dan Oggly