Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Concert date: 09.11.2016
Attendance: 550
Ticket price: €18.00 (advance) / €22.00 (day of show)
British alternative rockers Tindersticks are celebrating twenty-five years of existence this year. The quintet, formed in 1991 in Nottingham, doesn’t make a fuss about anniversaries. Instead they keep diligently writing and recording studio albums that never leave you indifferent artistically, each one a new evolutionary step on a musical path that the band’s respected name stands behind. So this year Tindersticks gave birth to their eleventh studio album, »The Waiting Room«, which came four years after its equally excellent predecessor »The Something Rain«.
Tindersticks are old friends of the Slovenian crowd, and this latest visit to CUK Kino Šiška was their third overall. Once again they were greeted with a great turnout. The crowd included plenty of female fans, who followed the action especially fervently (and knew the lyrics inside out). But let’s take it from the top.
As the opening act, Tindersticks invited the French indie folk outfit Amor Belhom Duo this time. As the name itself hints, Amor Belhom Duo are Naim Amor and Thomas Belhom. The band is known for two eras of activity. The first wrapped up in 2001 and lasted only four years. Recently, though, the two guys revived things. The invitation from Tindersticks for the new tour is hardly a surprise, since Thomas Belhom and Stuart Staples are longtime friends, and Belhom even played drums on Staples’s solo albums. In a good half hour, Amor Belhom Duo played a gorgeous, sweet-sounding and seductive string of short but sonically interesting little songs that, under an alt-indie pose, blend genre spices from cabaret chanson, French melodics and pop to even a bit of Americana. Still, within mostly predictable solutions, what really drew you in was the experimental streak, courtesy of Belhom on percussion, drums and countless gadgets, with keyboards, quirky sound effects and an extra guitar thrown in to back up Amor. Songs that were often simple, almost trivially pop-sounding, deliberately drifted away from the expected lines into musical dissonance, mostly thanks to Belhom’s sonic makeup, which colored the soundscape of the accompaniment, while Naim gently »combed« the microphone the whole time with his shy vocals, at times pushed to the edge of a whisper and narration. The crowd calmly took seats for this part of the show and helped create a special atmosphere of majestic elation in the hall.
Tindersticks played a two-hour concert in total. They took the stage around nine in the evening. The hall filled up to the brim before they started, with visitors even from neighboring Croatia and Italy, mostly camped out up front. Tindersticks are a hugely popular band. You could tell from the great interplay with the crowd during the set, especially on the somewhat older numbers, which the band played mainly in the second half of the show. Stuart A. Staples naturally commands the main attention on stage with his unmistakable voice, full-blooded and inspired by a Bowie-esque rhetoric. Once again that night he stunned with his delicacy, incredible vocal softness and flexibility. Against a backdrop of British melancholy with vibrant moods, built on short, tender, gentle yet concise movements from the band’s instrumental section, he brought emotions and passions to life with incredible effectiveness. Staples barely spoke to the crowd during the set. Simple as that. Words were superfluous. That night it was the specific atmosphere that did the talking, with which Tindersticks so grandly sucked everyone present into their unique musical world. With the first song they built a special sonic backdrop that never let go of its theatrical, almost cabaret-pop way of addressing the audience. The minimalist lighting reinforced that backdrop, wrapping the musicians in unobtrusive veils of light and recalling the minimalism of the staging once used by the great and unforgettable Leonard Cohen.
Superbly tuned and tight, Tindersticks devoted more than a third of the whole repertoire in Šiška to the new studio album »The Waiting Room«, released in mid-January this year. That’s no surprise, since it’s an exceptionally ambitious new work, with which Tindersticks climbed yet another step in cementing their own artistry and self-exploration. A hypnotic, gazing-into-the-distance mood often took over in a subtle interplay, where the incredibly precise Black drummer Earl Harvin practically »tumbled« his way through the entire concert. In the moments when Staples pulled his vocals into the background, the theatrics and arrogant hypnosis of the Tindersticks world rested on the repetition of simple but musically concise guiding patterns, where you could of course catch whiffs of the classic post-rock impulses of prehistoric types like The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and where the “chamber pop” label wasn’t far off. Delicate interweavings of nimble but fundamental guitar »jangle« sounds, enriched by witty keyboard touches, a rustic sonic quality, a strong foundation with a voluminous bass foot. The sound was perfect. It’s clear that Tindersticks definitely listened to plenty of Radiohead and Talk Talk in their time. They’re perfectionists who have artistic minimalism down cold, with their eyes closed.
That’s how the third visit of these alternative rock masters of their own musical craft to Ljubljana faded out. Brilliant. The softer you play, the hotter emotions and passions burn. Tindersticks once again crawled under our skin, the way only they can. Masters of building up a highly atmospheric effect that floats on the purism of organic sound and flawless execution, carefully and devotedly packed into the basic musical axiom »less is more«.
Setlist
TINDERSTICKS:
1. Johnny Guitar
2. Keep You Beautiful
3. Second Chance Man
4. Were We Once Lovers?
5. Sleepy Song
6. Medicine
7. Say Goodbye to the City
8. The Other Side of the World
9. Hey Lucinda
10. How He Entered
11. The Waiting Room
12. Planting Holes
13. We Are Dreamers!
14. Show Me Everything
15. This Fire of Autumn
16. A Night So Still
—encore—
17. Sometimes It Hurts
18. My Oblivion
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