Tindersticks Albums Ranked

Tindersticks are an English alternative rock band formed in Nottingham in 1991. They released six albums before singer Stuart A. Staples embarked on a solo career. The band reunited briefly in 2006 and more permanently the following year. The band recorded several film soundtracks, and have a long-standing relationship collaborating with French director Claire Denis. Staples, Boulter, Fraser, Macauley and Hinchliffe, all former members of Asphalt Ribbons, formed the band in 1991. The final line-up for the Old Horse mini-LP (1991) was: Stuart Staples (vocals), Dave Boulter (organ and accordion), Neil Fraser (guitar), Dickon Hinchliffe (guitar and strings), Al Macauley (percussion and drums), and John Thompson (bass). Mark Colwill was recruited when Thompson left the Asphalt Ribbons, but it is not known if he played any gigs under the Asphalt Ribbons name. They then changed their name to Tindersticks after Staples discovered a box of German matches on a Greek beach. Here are all of Tindersticks albums ranked.

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10. Distractions 

“The opening 11 minute electro pop of ‘man alone’ is a fine production and something they haven’t done before but it didn’t particularly move me. I wasn’t a great fan of the original tv personalities song either and Stuarts version of it here albeit with a timely lyric did little for me either.”

9. Can Our Love… 

“Here, Staples, Hinchliffe and co. retain the 70’s soul infusion of 1999’s Simple Pleasure, but strip back that sound to some absolute minimum. The title track is mostly just Staples and an organ, with a barely audible drumbeat; “No Man In the World” plods insistently around Hinchliffe’s brooding violin; while “Tricklin'” is nearly an a capella solo performance for Staples; he seems accompanied only by a symphony of reverb. “

8. No Treasure But Hope 

“A massive return to form, I like most of their records but I love a few of their albums and this is one. I’m not very good at explaining why albums are better than others so I won’t try. If you like their first few albums you’ll love this.”

7. Waiting For The Moon 

“The best entry point to discover tindersticks imho. it has some of the early style plus the soul side they displayed in simple pleasures and can our love.. an obvious comeback. oh and by the way , my oblivion might be the best song they ever did.”

6. The Waiting Room 

“The Waiting Room is brilliantly arranged and boasts a rich brass section. The manner of the band and the voice of the singer are recognizable at once. “We Are Dreamers!” is an unarguable highlight of the album although the other songs fall not too far back from it either. The only slight deficiency of the album is some uniformity of the stuff.”

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5. Simple Pleasure 

“The finest tindersticks album , focused elegant songs based on the complexities of love , cleverly typified by the cover of oddyseys disco weepie “looking for a way out ” At around 40 mins these soul influenced tracks rein in the more overblown aspects of the music from their epic 1st 2 albums and instead we get quite basic arrangements based around fender rhodes and acoustic guitars . (Indeed the instrumental “from the inside” sounds much like ray manzarek jamming with the MGs) .”

4. The Something Rain 

“A great surprise, brilliant really, this album is ultra cool and awfully powerful. It’s mostly made of jazzy lounge-rock and vocals that lift it above ordinary with lyrics that turn in odd directions and don’t look back. Dispite the lounginess, the music is really carefully crafted and builds beautifully. Every part, the purcussion, the strings, the keyboards, and the horns all have an integral role to play. It’s moody, but keeps a good pace and doesn’t drown in despair, rather it swells and shines with wide open eyes.”

3. Curtains 

“With this album the original magic was lost for good, even though the ingredients are mostly in place, particularly the miraculous singing. I guess there’s a certain sparseness and rawness and edginess to the first two albums that gave way to a more clean and polite sound. Still overflowing with magic though.”

2. Tindersticks 2 

“The second Tindersticks album feels like more of the same compared to the first one. This is fair enough – what the first album offered was pretty good – except that the consistency is less this time around, and the album feels padded out a little in a way which the previous album didn’t. It’s alright, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is just a bunch of songs that didn’t make the cut first”

1. The First Tindersticks Album 

“An incredible album, surely one of the most accomplished, fully realised debuts of any artist. This was praised to the heavens by the British music press when it originally came out, so I ignored it, our music press being a bunch of illiterate, tasteless vermin.”