‘Our audience deeply knows what they want from us’

For more than three decades, Tindersticks have been a strange case of a “cult band”: they had a major label record deal. They used orchestras. They entered the studio with actress Isabella Rossellini when she was a successful Lancôme model. They were popular in American college circuits. They even had a top-20 hit back home, although they were, from day one, bigger in continental Europe than in England. And in Greece, they were worshipped non-stop, like few other acts.

How does a band from rainy Nottingham become so adored in sunny Athens? “Just don’t call us dark & gloomy”, asks Stuart Staples.

In a past interview, back in 1997, I remember David Boulter (founding organist) saying that “when life is beautiful, we just enjoy it. But when things get dark and gloomy, then we seek refuge in writing songs”. Is this something that can still be valid after all these years? Do you identify with that statement, 27 years later?

Life isn’t straightforward, you know, whether you are in a stable situation or not. I think for me to write songs, it’s like trying to understand some things that are happening, devote some time to try and move on from something that troubles me. I never think of dark and gloomy myself. I think more of it like a struggle to understand what’s going on inside me, what’s going on around me. The songs, they come and find you. I know a lot of people say this, but I think the only choice I have of songwriting is to accept them when they come or not. I think that as soon as you accept them, you’ve got to be true to them. I understand what’s at the centre of them, what’s at the essence of them, and then I think it’s a journey to try and hold that feeling within words and music. And the words are the hardest thing for me. I now can look back and go, at the time of our second album, we had lost two very close people to us. I can see the reaction in the songwriting to that. But, at the time, it was more just about a kind of struggle, like reaching for something that you want to understand in a way.

You mentioned the word “struggle” that actually is a term tied with artistic creation. I suppose that all artists, when they’re sitting down to create true art, whether it is a painting or a film or a song in our case, they go through this struggle. Do you feel that with artificial intelligence now removing this element and being able to just deliver within a few seconds a song production upon request, even “in the style of Tinderstics”, art is threatened? Will it become just a commercial commodity?  

I assume that our audience deeply knows what they want from us, as they also know what they’re looking for: something to affect them. I mean the art element is removed from a lot of music, a lot of hearts, a lot of filmmaking. There is so much of the mainstream that it is just so easy to identify what was decided to refine this thing, or when the chorus comes and how it will sound like. Because there is so much deep understanding on how to press people’s buttons in so many art forms. It’s just the next step on from that, isn’t it? Most probably A.I. is not going to be any different to some of the way that songs are written now for the mainstream, so I don’t feel as though that has much to do with me and how I create music – it will be rather a long, long way far from that. But yeah, maybe it gets so good at some point, maybe it gets better than me. At the moment, though, what we do is unique because it is something that’s being created between us as five people, you know, it’s like this thing exists just there and then, it won’t exist forever. The new album, “Soft Tissue” may well prove my point, as it is very much a conversation and a relationship and a deep kind of understanding between five people. It’s not like me, sitting on my own in a room, trying to write a song. Sometimes, a small idea is like throwing a bomb into a room, and then a very special process begins – because there are five different personalities in that room, so how can something single-dimensional replicate that?  That creative feeling makes me stronger, it makes me want to move forward, it makes me want to have this unique perception. A.I. is mainly focused on the mainstream, which we are definitely not part of.

So you never felt actually part of the mainstream, but when you were starting as a band, you had a certain image: you were wearing suits on stage whereas almost all your contemporaries on MTV they had a boy band look, they actually were boys, even the quality britpop groups. Were there other colleagues that you consider to be kindred spirits, that you felt connected to and not isolated in a league of your own?

I think we’ve always felt isolated, although I understand it feels like a kind of negative way of looking at it. I think we’ve always felt in our own space in the early 90s as in contrast to this huge amount of music being made in the UK. I mean, there was not a certain scene we belonged to. Bands like Stereolab or Gallon Drunk were also in their own space doing their own thing and of course there was a really vibrant underground scene in London when we arrived from Nottingham, so bands like these were a huge help to us. And I do not reject the mainstream as a whole. Take Pulp, for example, who could doubt Jarvis Cocker’s excellence as a writer? Pulp were in their own world too, they were kind of weirdos that had the patience to become pop stars!
There’s so much nostalgia for the 90s and I can look back on it now positively but at the time I felt so divorced from the culture that was in the UK. I thought there’s so much bad music being made, but it was made with such positivity, looking back now, it was such a positive time, socially & politically. So I have mixed emotions about the ‘90s, it was a fantastic time for us, we were in our bubble, we made our two first albums, nobody had anything to say about them apart from us, and they were delivered completely as they were made, and they were made exactly how we wanted them. And that was a  really marvellous time but then again we were surrounded by this kind of lad culture kind of Loaded magazine, you know? I mean, it was so far away from us and felt kind of retrogressive to us as well, but it would be safe to say I have mixed emotions about the 1990s, for sure.

Back then, record companies booked (and paid) the studios and you were all living in London. Now you have your own studio in Limousin, a small town in France, so logistics wise at least, it must be more difficult to gather all five members of the band, right? 

That’s right! You see, in the 1990s, we all lived in London, and we had our own rehearsal room, we had our own studio like for demoing stuff and we’d meet there because we all lived in the same city and we’d only make music, we wouldn’t do anything apart from that. Now I live in France, and in order to meet up with the rest of the band, arrangements should be made. Earl (Harvin, drums) must travel from Berlin, David has to travel from Prague, Dan (McKinna, bass) has to travel the UK, Neil (Fraser, guitar, the third founding member still in the current line-up) has to travel from Belgium. By the time all four of them have done that, they want something to happen, you know, they’ve made so much effort, that so our time together is seen as really precious. So, from the moment we get together, it’s like something needs to happen, because of all the energy we have devoted to it.

All these years and after all these albums, have you ever felt trapped in a certain formula, that you need to deliver something that the audience was already expecting? It must be difficult to have a new vision every time you enter the studio. 

One could argue that there is, indeed, an average “Tindersticks sound”. But the new album has all these female vocals. I mean, it is not the first time we experiment with that, but in this case they bring a whole soul element with them. We’ve been making music for…how long now? Is it more than 30 years? Well, that is a long time, isn’t it? In the first lineup of the band, especially for the first two albums, we were totally free, we were just like just following the ideas and then came success and record companies’ demands and, as much as we’ve tried to push them away, I think we couldn’t help but become more self-aware. And that, you know, that was not necessarily a good thing for us because the band became our job and not our love, it was how we paid our rent. And that for musicians like us, that’s a really, really hard thing to accept. You spent 10 years using all your spare time to make music and then you got up one morning and, when it’s your job to make music, it becomes something different. So, I think in the middle period we did lose our sense of real adventurousness and, and I think then when the band got back together 15 years ago, with an updated line-up, I think that’s a direction we managed again to follow. Especially since “The Something Rain” in 2012, we have been searching to approach ideas in a different way and to go places we don’t feel as though we’ve been before. And that’s just a constant kind of feeling of moving forward, or at least of not looking backwards. And this is how we arrived on this album, which feels like a sweet spot to me, where it feels nice, and this has nothing to do with commerciality. Because even in sound checks, at this moment in time, we enjoy ourselves.

By the time you will be in Athens for the show of November the 2nd, you will have already toured the new albums in various cities abroad, including America – how to you plan to reproduce this enriched sound on stage?

All the ideas in the album come from a room of five people together and all the additional vocals and arrangements come from the same place. We use these extra sounds but we do not need them – so, it’s going to be the five of us on stage and that’s more than enough, because, when it works, this is the best way to experience the band. It’s about the telepathy we have when we play music together, and when that’s unaffected by orchestras or different guests or whatever, I think it can be a really pure and a really great experience.

In the past, you have made some interesting duets with female voices: Maria McKee, Carla Torgerson, the actress Isabella Rossellini, Jenny Beth from Savages, and of course, the American Canadian Lhasa de Sela. Your deep crooning fits this female approach, so it always works perfectly. Are there any singers out there that you have on your bucket list for similar duets in the future?

There are female singers that I really admire, but I think it always comes from the idea and the personality that’s needed for each song. When we lost Lhasa back in 2010 because of breast cancer, when she was only 37 years old, I felt as though something was taken away from me. She was a soulmate for me, and I could easily imagine myself writing many more songs for me and her to sing together. So that’s taken me a long time to think about writing duets again. But, maybe, that time is getting closer, but it is always difficult to lose a best friend.

Ten years ago, you were a guest in a tribute concert to famous director David Lynch. Is his name on a list of possible future collaborators?

I don’t think he’s going to be working any more on new movies, so we may have lost our chance but I’m sure you’ll still be a presence in the world, so that’s something. I remember buying a ticket to go and see “Blue Velvet” at the cinema when it came out, and I came out of there, changed! When you experience other people’s work that changes you, it happens so many times, but it’s always very special. David Lynch’s work, his ideas will always be a part of our DNA in a way, I mean, because it’s just people change, you know, artists also change and others change you as well. Some things, some pieces of art can change the way you hear music, and it is extremely flattering when someone tells me our music had such an effect on him.
I remember in the mid-eighties, I had a job decorating a house, and the guy who owned the house heard that we were playing Dinosaur Jr., while painting the walls, and this guy, who was older than us, he came in and said, “check this out, it’s called “Hot Buttered Soul” by Isaac Hayes” and he put it on and I was left speechless because it was, and still is, such an amazing piece of work that undeniably runs through everything I do. There are so many artists that live inside other artists and help them distinguish what’s right and wrong, what’s exciting, what is authentic, what isn’t, and these people help you figure out all that stuff.

Besides that Isaac Hayes reference, you have done some soul covers in the past in songs made famous by The Four Tops or Odyssey and other covers as well: Townes Van Zandt, Peggy Lee, Tom Waits, Television Personalities and you have stated in the past that you are a Boz Scaggs as well. Not exactly what we would expect from a songwriter like you. So, what music are you grooving to lately, when you want to listen to music of other people at home and not your own?

In the last few years I’ve kind of wanted something to come along and inspire me, you know, as it happened in the 2010s –  there was so much music for me in that decade, especially American hip-hop, it was like a rebirth of the golden age, when Kendrick Lamar and all these guys around him, these artists from Los Angeles, like Thundercat and Flying Lotus, who did these great records. But now, to be honest, I haven’t felt this for a while, I haven’t felt this energy. At that time, though, it helped me so much to believe in the future and young people!
But recently, ok I may pick up a bit here a bit there, but there’s nothing that kind of slaps me around the face and blows me away, the effect that Frank Ocean had on me 8-10 years ago. 

Six years ago, in association with the British Film Institute, you personally edited a film dedicated to the works of F. Percy Smith. I must admit that I wasn’t familiar with him, so you kind of introduced his works to me, and I went back and saw all these amazing and pioneering images. What drove you to make that? Was it challenging to be totally responsible for everything and not strictly as a musician, providing the film score.

To come across something like Percy Smith and feel so inspired by his work and to feel it… It was such a modern work of art and I felt as though his work could be shown, taking away the kind of  “oh it must be a dated black & white early cinema thing” perception and focus on all the parts that are just amazing and abstract. In the past, when we made soundtracks for other people’s movies, obviously we never touched the image, we could only have an opinion about when it moves, when it changes, when it cuts… Working on films with French director Claire Denis, I was able to get lost in a really different way, but it’s still a conversation between me and her, a totally different collective desire. In the case of “Minutes Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy”, the experience was altogether different: I was making music, but I could also touch the images and have this constant conversation between music and image, solely arranged by me. Through this film, I learned that it is something I can actually do, so I am not afraid of it. Would I try it again? If I ever bump into a project that would seem to me like an open avenue, and something comes along that makes me want to walk down that avenue, I won’t feel tentative about it!

You have four kids your oldest daughter is 31 years old – let’s say that your kids come to you and say that they have decided they want to be musicians. Would you be excited or worried?

Well, my son is a far better musician than I am and has great sensibility, but life is different now. When I was young, I was able to claim money from the government, I was able to find somewhere really cheap to live, I was able to devote myself to make music. It’s not like that anymore for kids – on the contrary, they have real responsibilities. If they don’t live at home, they’ve got to pay the rent. They’ve got to pay their taxes. They’ve got to do this and that, things I had never thought about, and to be honest, I wouldn’t be here today talking about music if it wasn’t for David and Neil – they would say the same thing about me. It’s just like, we have this collective belief in each other that it helps. It helped us through the times when nothing was happening. It was like a way to be together, to create something. And even if nobody was listening, which nobody did for 10 years, we managed to go through those times together. To have fellow travellers… I think it’s the most important thing, especially when it comes to your decision to stick with something. If you’re alone, it’s just you, and when that happens, you’re just open to all the insecurities, all the doubts. So, I would say having at least one person that you meet, and you make something with is totally necessary. But it is not easy to meet those fellow travellers today.

There’s the story that back in summer of 1992, the name “Tinderesticks” was decided on a summer holiday to the Greek island of Amorgos – is that true or just a nice story? 

No, it is true, but it’s part of a bigger story because I think we’d actually reached a point where we’d moved to London and we were trying so hard to reach people with our music. But nothing was happening for us, and I really mean nothing. We were called The Asphalt Ribbons and, up until that point, we’d been making demo tapes, sending them to record companies, trying to find a way into the music business and that summer, we said, “OK, let’s just not do anything this summer!” We were thinking that maybe we were just wasting our time  and so we had that summer off and I went to Greece. So one day, at the beach, I spotted this pack of matches with the name TinderSticks on it – obviously some German tourist must have thrown it away. And, right there, I decided that we needed to carry on, but to basically do it ourselves, our own way and not try any more to find a way in through gatekeepers of the music industry. We needed to make our own music, our own records and see where that would take us. So I took this box of matches as a sign. When I got back, we changed the name of the band and we made our first single patchwork in our kitchen: a seven inch single in just 500 copies that were sold out in a few weeks and then the second single was printed in 2.000 copies and that was it: people started to come to us and we stopped going to people. And we owe all that to the summer of 1992, so, undoubtedly, there is an initial connection with Greece anyway.

And that escalated to you having your own residence in another island, the famous Ithaca.

Yeah, I dived my time between there and France – France is where my studio is, so it’s pretty much more of a workplace, whereas Ithaca is more of a dream place, it allows me to get away from my mind, to wonder, and it’s really important to me to do that. No, I’m just looking forward to, you know, I feel, I feel good when I get off the plane and Athens always so it’s looking forward to that feeling.

Do you ever feel nostalgic for England? Would you imagine yourself returning to live there?

No, no, no, no. When I visit England, it’s great. I love being around English people, and I communicate in a way that you can’t do when you’re in Europe, but feeling good is not enough. As I have lived in England for a long time, before we left, I’m very aware that it’s very much an island mentality in the UK. But I prefer to be on the mainland, you know, it’s not as such I need to be, but a place where I can feel connected to the rest of the world. From where I live now, I can be in Paris in two hours. I can be in Saint Sebastian in four hours, I feel connected to places, and that suits me. Living in the UK again would feel as though I’m kind of back in a place that’s kind of cut off in a certain way.

But isn’t Ithaca an island as well?

Yes, it is but I don’t get the same feeling there. It is a humble place and people there don’t have ideas above their station. I don’t know. Maybe it helps that they were never an empire.

The Tindersticks play just one Greek show on Saturday, November the 2nd, on City Theater. Their new album, “Soft Tissue” is out now on lp/cd/digital through City Slang/Rockarolla Records.

[Profile photo in the text by Julien Bourgeois.]