Tindersticks, Can Our Love... (Beggars Banquet) 9+
Since 1993 Tindersticks have been known, revered or ignored for their image as a mush-mouthed brand of mopey soundtracks to angst-ridden French films that don't exist. Which isn't a bad thing, necessarily, except that their music was so murky and impenetrable that it was hard to get a grip on any particular song long enough to remember it. The band's American label must have thought the same thing, as 1999's Simple Pleasures still remains unreleased in the states. From what I've heard about it, it was an unfair decision, one that should be rectified when Can Our Love... is recognized by the end of the year for what it is -- a sublimely soulful dream of an album, that updates without plundering the zeitgeist of singer/lovermen like Al Green, Tim Buckley, Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison . . . all of whom produced love songs that transcended more vapid contemporaries by concurrently battling demons. Drama and pain always did up the marquee value of art. Stuart Staples still mumbles like he has marbles in his mouth, but the band's newfound grace and spareness gives the songs room to breathe. It's as if once the band's age caught up with their precocious world-weariness, everything comes a little easier. In the opener "Dying Slowly," they realize that aging, "This dying slowly...seems better than shooting myself." Twenty-something suicidal angst matures into middle-aged stoicism. "People Keep Comin' Around" is practically a Curtis Mayfield tribute, with the signature strings and a relentless mash groove that destroys all emotional hesitation in its path. The title track is a Zen prayer, as devotional and moving as Green's "God Bless Our Love." Staples even reveals some brimstone as he testifies, and letting rip some phrases that actually rise half an octave. "Sweet Release" is the nearly nine minute centerpiece, its swelling organ and strings teasing with the possibility of release, but promising only exquisite foreplay. Don't play this at work. "Chilitetime" recalls the stately funk of Gamble and Huff's Philly soul productions with achingly mournful Dirty Three violin and Isaac Hayes guitar. When most of the contemporary R&B whose idea of daring is to toy with the BPM is long forgotten, this stately music will live on.
