Tindersticks – Falling Down A Mountain (Music Review)
By Bill Purdy • Mar 17th, 2010 • Category: Indie Rock, ReviewsTindersticks
Falling Down a Mountain
Constellation
Rating: 3.8 out of 5
Link: Tindersticks home page (as of March 15, 2010, playing the excellent “Black Smoke” video upon page load)
Link: Constellation Records Falling Down a Mountain page
Would it mean anything to you if I told you Falling Down a Mountain is the best thing Tindersticks have released in at least twelve years? No? Would it mean anything if I told you Tindersticks were still a going concern?
It might have been easy to forget, as a graph of quality of Tindersticks’ output over time looks like an Olympic ski jump (or a mountain, down which one might, say, fall…). I stopped paying a whole lot of attention after 1997’s Curtains, which itself was a mere shadow of their self-titled 1993 debut. Tindersticks is still an album I listen to with some degree of frequency whenever I want to immerse myself in Tindersticks’ unique brand of mumbly atmospherics.
Add to that the tendency to incorporate female voices that distract from Staples’ voice – tha band’s greatest asset – Tindersticks had become a lounge act, I think. And a rather dull one, at that.
Falling Down a Mountain is a return to form, then. The title track would feel right at home on that 1993 debut, a mysterious-sounding churning thing that manages to sound like a jazzy ode to early Nick Cave (an easy comparison that’s probably made all too often; I’ll stick with it because no other singer evokes Cave to such a large degree as Stuart Staples without really sounding much like him at all).
“She Rode Me Down” weaves in elements of Morricone’s classic spaghetti western themes with the “classic” Tindersticks sound. Had it been included on Tindersticks 2nd self-titled record, or even Curtains, it might have been considered the strongest cut on either, albeit one that fades out a bit too soon.
The coolest song on the record is “Black Smoke,” a bluesy number in which Staples tells of being shot down, his lungs filled with black smoke, and going down to a river that is also filled with black smoke. I typed those lyrics, but I still have no idea what the song about. Revenge of some sort? The environment, maybe? No clue. The “black smoke, black smoke” harmony delivers the goods, though – “Black Smoke” is as good as anything the band’s released.
Tindersticks still can’t completely escape from the lounge, though. Too many of the songs here (maybe one in three) are the kind of thing that drove me away from Tindersticks all those years ago – directionless, mopey, piano-shaped tunes that never develop into a compelling song (ironically, the closing instrumental, “Piano Music,” doesn’t really fall into this category).
Perhaps Falling Down A Mountian would have been better released as an EP, collecting only the stronger material and leaving off the dull stuff. Still, I’m encouraged. It’s rare that a band operating on fumes for so many years finds a creative spark at all. Falling Down A Mountain is good enough to make me excited to hear what’s coming next.
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Bill Purdy is not a musician. He hasn't a musical bone in his body. That pretty much disqualifies him as a musician (you don't want to be in the room on the rare occasion when he tries to make music), but it apparently doesn't impair his ability to consume music — especially new music — at a ravenous pace. He also likes to tell anyone within earshot what he thinks of music, fancies himself a critic of some sort. We, of course, know better.
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