Tindersticks

The Tindersticks' debut opens on a note of happiness, but it soon digs down into the depths of despair and debauchery. Singer Stuart Staples sounds like he's narrating a series of subterranean adventures involving drunken, menacing bullfighters. The group's wealth of orchestration is rougher here -- not as focused as they would normally be, but no less emotional.

Van Morrison's's "astral weeks" has come to signify a soulful impressionism that wells up
from sources Wordsworth deemed "too deep for tears." Every note Nick Drake recorded
before his accidental overdose in 1974 throbs with similar aching beauty. Morning-glory
vocals, couplets of such Elizabethan elegance as "Open up the broken cup/Let goodly sin
and sunshine in" and arrangements that wed jazz freedom to the dignity of string... More >