Search - Tindersticks :: Can Our Love

Another Tindersticks triumph

Gianmarco Manzione | Tampa, FL USA | 07/23/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Some Tindersticks fans claim that over the course of five albums, their sound has never altered. This is false, and undercuts a virtue that evolves even further on this latest release: their versatility. These guys have come a long way from the brilliantly affecting self-titled album of 1995. Two albums later, their predictably dour soundscapes acquiesced somewhat to lighter melodies like "Can We Start Again" and thumping bass lines that were hip enough to be sampled for the next Beastie Boys album, such as "Before You Close Your Eyes" on 1999's Simple Pleasures. Can Our Love continues this evolution, though it begins with a reprisal of earlier days on the haunting "Dying Slowly," featuring the familiar, acoustic and strings atmosphere that carries Staples's voice in a cradle of pathos, and the brutal irony of Staples's expectedly magnificent songwriting is in high gear: "I've been with everyone and no one." Yet "People Keep Coming Around" is something no Tindersticks album has ever offered. Firstly, there is a roaring electric guitar solo. The Tindersticks aren't exactly Pink Floyd, but the sound is almost as ambitious as anything on The Wall, beginning with an instantly addictive bass line and hypnotic drum beat that delivers the song into an harmonious mess of tambourines, electric guitars, bass, drums, horns and the riveting chorus, "People keep comin' around you better watch yourself." This is clearly one of the Tindersticks' greatest songs, and by far their most musically ambitious. "Tricklin'" is an unnecessary waste of time, featuring nothing but a droning organ and Staples repeating "tricklin' through my mind, it tickles . . ." The title track, however, resurrects the album into the promise that its first two tracks foreshadowed. The ethereal wail of the guitar accompanies one of Staples's most delicate and sincere vocal performances. "Sweet Release" brings this album's particular power into full focus with its captivating organ which bites into the song at just the right moments. The factor that differentiates this album from the previous four is that every song offers a new instrument for listeners to cling to and ride the song to its quiet conclusion. On the first track, it's the acoustic guitar, next is the bass beat, then the whining and subtle guitar of the title track, then the piercing organ on Sweet Release" or the dancing violins of the eerie "Chiletime." There is a different way of listening to each song so that all are invited into our bones, and each one tells you how to listen to it, as though the album came with hidden instructions. The next three songs are just as wonderful. Don't Ever Get Tired features such delicate and jangling guitar licks that it recalls the days of The Byrds and Bob Dylan's first rock records, though, unlike those artists, the Tindersticks have pattented a way of containing their energy within soundscapes that always seem ready to burst, but never quite do, and that is a refreshingly tasteful approach to recording that rarely surfaces."

Tindersticks have done it again...

iggysey | New Jersey | 07/07/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"With Can our Love, Tindersticks have managed to take their sound to a new level that surpasses the previous direction of Simple Pleasure. They've exchanged the orchestral, layered and somewhat lugubrious productions of their earlier albums for a more stripped down, soulful approach. "People keep coming around", "Sweet release" and "Chilite-time" are absolutely fantastic tracks. The track "Tricklin'" seems more of an 'experimental' song, and the short length of this release are the only detractions to an otherwise beautiful effort. Highly recommended."

How many times have I listened to this album . . .

Gulley Jimson | Bethesda, MD | 11/05/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album was a revelation. I'd heard some of their older stuff, and found the CD surprisingly cheap; I don't think it was selling very well. After listening to it a few times, I thought a bunch of the songs were good. But for some reason, I kept playing it again and again, and the songs just kept getting better and better. And I never got tired of it. Every time I'm driving at night - especially if I have a long time to go on the highway - I put this in and can slip into it for an hour. It's sort of a darker, slower brother to Exile on Main Street, which is another album I've never gotten tired of, and always stays in the car for when I'm driving and it's a sunny day.What both albums have in common is a groove. Maybe a better comparison is In a Silent Way, the Miles Davis album, which shares the atmosphere of Can Our Love and has the same driving pulse. Both bands also have the same talent of developing a simple chord progression and winding melodies in and out of it - with voices, strings, or horns - so that a song that's essentially just the same repeated pattern always seems headed somewhere, and arrives. And they both have SOUL.For those of you ask, won't soul music change, now that our souls have turned strange? - the answer is yes. The lyrics aren't about the usual kind of heartbreak, but about a more modern kind of sickness: the inability to communicate, to connect, even when you want to; overcoming hardness and the desire to be free of people instead of being tied to them.Many people use the word 'romantic despair' to describe the Tindersticks, and this is actually my least favorite aspect of their music, because too often - especially on the earlier records - it seemed like something of a fashionable pose. My two least favorite songs on the record - Dying Slowly and No Man in the World - both suffer from a hint of this self-indulgent melancholy. The chorus of Dying Slowly - "this dying slowly, seemed better than shooting myself" - is by far the worst line on the album, because it doesn't ring true, and the portentous spoken word narration on No Man in the World is only just redeemed by the beautiful chorus and orchestration of the rest of the song.But the rest of the album is just fantastic. Every song is a masterpiece, and there isn't a word that seems fake, or a false step in the singing or arrangements. Simple Pleasure got much better reviews, for some reason, but I think there are more strong songs on this album, and the female chorus on Simple Pleasure didn't fit as well with Staples's voice as the dueling male voices on this album. They felt like an intrusion, because this is above all a band: this album doesn't sound like each of the tracks was laid down separately - it feels like a great jazz band, going into the studio and playing together, with each musician playing off the ideas of the others."