Perhaps one of the least career orientated bands around, and now spread throughout Europe, Tindersticks tend to get together every now and then, to crack open some ideas, and see what happens. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way in ambition with them, and stylistically they come across as a bunch of Blue Velvet extras, staying up far too late again in some cabaret hell hole.

But this is the Dome, darlings, and the Brighton Festival to boot. And by golly they’re here too entertain you! Except, they don’t quite manage it.

Although a relative newcomer to the band, I have been admiring their latest album, The Waiting Room, a record that glides gently along a mix of loungecore, mini-disco, afrobeat, soulful balladry, sparse instrumental vignettes, and plenty of melancholy. The production is warm, spacious, and richly atmospheric; the textures, sonics and song arrangements inhabiting just enough dynamic thrust to more than simply hypnotise you. And when Stuart A. Staples opens his mouth, the final piece of the puzzle slots in neatly; his idiosyncratic voice turns booze-sodden, languid, and sometimes angsty. Indeed their music is made for the world of film and soundtracks, which have often benefited from the Tindersticks sound, one that generally compliments the visuals.

So, it’s a bit of disappointment that the album’s dynamism, rich sonics and subtle nuances fall largely flat here. The fact that the album is played as it is in the finished product, with each piece accompanied by a film made by filmmakers specifically commissioned by the band (including a couple by the self-commissioning Staples himself), only heightens the slightly lifeless music behind it, that is too languid for its own good despite the efforts of the brass section, and the inventive percussive work of Earl Harvin, and the occasional bouts of stage melodrama via Staples.

Even the films, while visually spellbinding, are of little artistic note. A mixture of cut-up old black and white footage, speeded up car scenes, slo-motion tracking scenes and everyday urban scenes. An exception is the disconcerting, and somewhat surreal film of ultra-mega quarry trucks, dwarfing a fragile human or two via the use of a super telephonic lens. The song that accompanies this, ‘We Are Dreamers’ (which on the album features Jehnny Beth of Savages), is also one of the best tonight, somehow eliciting a nightmarish vibe within the cacophony, the only time Tindersticks really let loose.

I’m not sure if Tindersticks were truly made for the stage. For film and on record, a definite yes. But, like the cabaret scene characters in Blue Velvet, they can all too often come across as background players, not helped by the general indecipherable lyrics of an onstage Staples.
Jeff Hemmings