1 2 3 4 5 
reviewed for FasterLouder

One of life’s great tragedies is that sense of anticipation you have for a new album from a band that has previously delivered a brilliant piece of work – and they always fail to live up to your expectations. The cruel part is that you keep holding out hope with each new album that comes along, thinking this will be the one.

Tindersticks gave us Simple Pleasures back in 1999 and the last decade has seen a series of stumbling attempts at matching that heavenly mix of sweet soul and smokey shimmer. Can Our Love… went close but the subsequent albums both felt like limp attempts at capturing their magic. With each release the band themselves even showed dissatisfaction with their previous attempt. Of their last album they said “The Hungry Saw seems like an album made within the confines of what we knew” and prior to that – “Waiting For The Moon left us in disarray and confusion. Something had gone”.

Falling Down A Mountain sees new members Earl Harvin (drums) and singer/songwriter David Kitt (guitar/vocals) joining the band, a move that you would hope would inject fresh life into the music but instead much of the album has a sense of weariness hanging over it like a dark cloud that never breaks.

After a strong start with the tense title track and the gentle croon of Keep You Beautiful they start to stray from the game plan. Peanuts is a strange one, a duet between Stuart Staples and the reclusive folk singer Mary Margaret O’Hara. Lyrically it fails with its use of the like and dislike of peanuts as an analogy of love conquering all. It just seems clumsy and a lost opportunity with O’Hara and her forlorn voice.

She Rode Me Down takes us to a western soundtrack with the ‘sound of the railroad’ drumming and the mariachi trumpet. Held up against the likes of Calexico it just sounds shallow and as if they band lost interest in their own song it just fades out after 3 minutes without achieving any semblance of journey and destination.

Strings take centre stage on Hubbards Hills and they feel like an interlude (an albeit graceful one) rather than an integral part of the album. When a lonely trumpet arrives in the song the mood shifts to that of a spaghetti western where the hero’s best friend or lover has just died. and it serves to remind that the central figure of Tindersticks is without doubt Staples – yet they seem wary of acknowledging and capitalizing on that. As a total contrast they then change gears for Black Smoke which comes closest to meeting the potential of past efforts. It has the shuffling groove and a momentum that much of Falling Down A Mountain lacks.

Factory Girls is Tindersticks at their best in terms of ballads. Stuart Staples with his rich, deep and slightly strangled voice intoning over a beautifully restrained, piano-led piece. It builds and swells without ascending into bombast and again reminds us of what they are capable of.

Tindersticks again show their potential and hints of their past glory. Don’t write off Falling Down A Mountain as a failure, it does have worthwhile moments but is by no means a return to form. Staples delivered a rewarding solo album in 2006 and he needs to look to the strengths of that if Tindersticks are to rekindle their creative fire.

Falling Down A Mountain is out now on 4AD through Remote Control Records.