Album Review: Soft Tissue by Tindersticks

Fourteenth album from Stuart Staples and co features all of their classic hallmarks but also exists in a more elevated, refined realm Given the consistency and quality of Tindersticks' recorded output over the last 30 years they're a band that it's easy to take for granted. The core elements of their music have largely remained unchanged over the years, with only occasional minor deviations, but when they do re-emerge from time away their sound has always still felt fresh and appealing. We last heard from them in 2021 on Distractions, a more experimental album by their standards, partially as a consequence of new working methods necessitated by the pandemic.

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It’s easy to see the initial part of Tindersticks’ career as a missed opportunity. There was a brief moment, around the time of their eponymous 1995 album and its successor Curtains, where it looked as if the Nottingham band’s lushly orchestrated, emotive songs might find a wide audience: the former briefly reached the Top 20, the latter propelled them to a major label deal. But they were doomed to remain a critically acclaimed cult concern, bigger in continental Europe than at home.

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Over the many long years they've been active as a band, Tindersticks have stretched and twisted in many different directions while retaining and building upon the darkly melancholy, resolutely cinematic core of their sound. Sometimes the experiments have been somewhat drastic, as on the electronic-leaning 2021 record Distractions, and sometimes the alterations have been more subtle. The band's 14th album, Soft Tissue, falls into the latter category.

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