Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. El Diablo En El Ojo
2. A Night In
3. My Sister
4. Tiny Tears
5. Snowy In F# Minor
6. Seaweed
7. Vertrauen 2
8. Talk To Me
9. No More Affairs
10. Singing
11. Travelling Light
12. Cherry Blossoms
13. She's Gone
14. Mistakes
15. Vertrauen 3
16. Sleepy Song

Disc 2:

1. El Diablo En El Ojo
2. A Night In
3. Talk To Me
4. She's Gone
5. No More Affairs
6. City Sickness
7. Vertrauen 2
8. Sleepy Song
9. Jism
10. Drunk Tank
11. Mistakes
12. Tiny Tears
13. Raindrops
14. For Those...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47943 in Music
• Released on: 2004-06-14
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Box set, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .30 pounds

CD Description
A string of adjectives come to mind when trying to describethe music of the Tindersticks: romantic, ironic, moody, lush and cinematic, among them. There is a touch of camp to thedark, graceful beauty of these songs, as shimmering waves of vibes, chiming guitars, funeral parlor organ, bold horn arrangements and rich, lilting strings create a surreal, late-night lounge atmosphere. The band employs equal doses of theVelvet Underground, late-period Roxy Music and movie soundtrack textures, while vocalist Stuart Staples affects a smooth, lugubrious Scott Walker-esque croon honed to a dramatic mumble, giving the ensemble a distinctive sound.
The band's second album lives up to the expectations generated by their dazzling debut. There is less of a rock element here. Thehushed, spooky ambience conjured by tracks such as "A NightIn", "No More Affairs", and "Cherry Blossoms", with its ghostly, double-tracked vocals, stakes out new, evocative territory for the band, heightened by Staples beautiful, though often indecipherable baritone murmur. The influence of film music is felt in the almost Ennio Morricone-esque "Vertrauen II" and "Snowy In F# Minor", while the band's subtle, sly sense of humor is evident on tracks like the tongue-in-cheek swing of "My Sister". This is a mightily impressive follow-updisc by one of the more creative and stylish pop acts of the '90s.

Customer Reviews

Two Five Star Discs In The One Package
The first two Tindersticks album are both confusingly called Tindersticks. For anybody who doesn't know this is the second one. Such eponymous shenanigans aside this is another thrilling ride through the darkness with the band. You get the Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra inspired 'Travelling Light' with Carla Torgerson of the Walkabouts in the Sinatra role. Then there's the dark balladry of 'Tiny Tears'. 'My sister' is a blackly humorous spoken recital reminiscent of the Velvet Underground's 'The Gift' . This is tremendous stuff. The orchestrations are a step up from their debut album with Terry Edwards supplying trumpet, saxophone and french horn. This is the probably the best value package of the recent reissues as the 'Live At The Bloomsbury Theatre 12.3.95' bonus disc was previously released in it's own right, albeit in limited numbers. It features accomplished versions, with strings attached, of most of the second album with several songs ('City Sickness', 'Jism', 'Drunk Tank', 'Rain Drops' ) from the first album also featured. Assuming the album is actually sequenced in the same order as the performance, after warming up with 'El Diablo En El Ojo' and 'A Night In' , the band hit their stride with an urgent version of 'Talk To Me'. The version of 'City Sickness' is blistering. Rapid fire drumming and brass squeals underpin 'Vertrauen 2'. In a live context some of these songs sound less claustrophic, but sometimes more frantic, than they do on the studio albums. Stuart Staples is in fine voice (well, fine gravelly voice) throughout. Essential.

Second best Tindersticks album
The fragile voice of Stuart Staples and the exquisite combination of the Tindersticks mini-orchestra return for their second album; and whilst it’s not as accomplished as its older brother, the wide range of styles across the tracks only serve to highlight the real gems from the rest.
Herein lies the only real problem with the album, in my opinion many of the tracks can easily be discarded as average and just fill the gaps between the extraordinary stand-out songs. The first of these is worth its weight in gold though – ‘My sister’, lyrically it’s a masterpiece in spoken word from the very start – ‘Do you remember my sister? How many mistakes did she make with those never blinking eyes? I couldn’t work it out. I swear she could read your mind, your life, the depths of your soul at one glance’, and musically it reaches Olympian heights and may well still serve as their finest song. This is followed by ‘Tiny tears’, which is one of the best ballads written about love gone wrong you will ever hear. Two other tracks are worth sticking on repeat and they are ‘Seaweed’, which has a sublime and haunting piano rift that eventually gets under your skin. Plus the triumphant ‘Mistakes’ which slowly builds before sweeping you away and really should have been the finale.
I don’t want to be too critical of the Tindersticks as a band, as this is a very worthy follow up to their first release, and again this version is ably supplemented by an extra live CD which includes some of their best songs. It’s just a more hit and miss effort, so be prepared for a less polished album than the first one, still they remain head and shoulders over many of their peers.

Sublime, transcendent, magnificent
I recently returned to Tindersticks' early work and I find this album even more rewarding than their first album and 'Curtains', although I rate both very highly. The mood of this, the second eponymous album, is haunting and tender, and in contrast to one of the other reviewers I find the quality of the songs extremely impressive throughout. Tindersticks' lyrical sophistication and subtlety is here combined with darkly gorgeous melodies in songs full of wistful, remorseful longings; these songs only become more valuable to me as I know them better.

'My Sister' is as dry, macabre and startling as anything I've ever heard. 'Tiny Tears' manages to be so moving that I can take the title wholly seriously, which is as high praise as I know how to give. 'Seaweed' and 'A Night In' are songs which drift sweetly into the mind again and again. 'No More Affairs' is delightful, wry and melancholic. 'Cherry Blossoms' is achingly, yearningly lovely, and 'Sleepy Song' elegiac and inexplicably harrowing. 'Mistakes' is soaring, heart-rending and all the more powerful for the elliptical simplicity of the lyrics. These are just some personal favourites.

The extra disc featuring a live performance is also excellent: thrilling, beautiful and touching. This is a treat for grown-ups, but a richly pleasurable treat all the same.