Tindersticks at Brighton Dome - Review

The Nottingham band continue to charm and captivate after almost 30 years and are resurgent after almost splitting in the mid 2000s.

With a core of founder members and some new blood they have gone on to amass an impressive body of work and are currently touring their 10th studio album No Treasure but Hope.

Unsurprisingly, given their immense musicality, their sound has changed in recent years. The songs are, largely, shorn of the lush arrangements (and occasional string sections), which characterised much of their early material, but retain an intensity in their sparser form.

The often melancholic songs still tread the line between joy and unbearable sadness, and sound all the more heart-wrenching/life affirming through the filter of Stuart Staples’ unmistakable rough-edged but velvet voice.

Their latest long-player, their most accessible since Simple Pleasure in 1999, has attracted some welcome and deserved positive reviews and featured heavily in Sunday’s setlist.

In Pinky in the Daylight they have a gentle slice of pop vaudeville and a genuine earworm, which in the best of all possible worlds should have garnered hours upon hours of airplay when it was released last year.

In contrast to much of the new album, Trees Fall was closer in its emotional sweep to Her, a Tindersticks classic, which also received a welcome run out.

Elsewhere Neil Fraser’s electric guitar sparkled more than it ever seemed to before and led the line on the splendid track The Amputees, and David Boulter’s piano played a big part in their sound, especially on For the Beauty. As a band they sounded unified, bursting with ideas and ready to add to that great back catalogue.

By Steve Holloway