Tindersticks have announced news of their new studio album, ‘No Treasure But Hope’, out 15th November via City Slang.
To celebrate the release, the band have shared lead track ‘The Amputees,’ waltzing with a fairground melodic swing and tender couplets and accompanied by a lyric video.
Additionally, Tindersticks have announced news of an extensive European tour beginning 29th January in Belgium and ending 24th May in Ireland, and visiting the UK for the below two shows.
Tindersticks UK dates:
Sunday 2nd February 2020 – BRIGHTON – Dome tickets
Friday 22nd May 2020 – LONDON – Royal Festival Hall tickets
A full list of live dates can be found via the band’s official website.
Three years since their last album proper, singer Stuart Staples decided Tindersticks’ return called for something special. “I felt we needed to be able to make something meaningful,” he says. No Tindersticks album has lacked meaning, of course, but these mavens of intimate, expansive mood song dig deep and diversify beautifully on ‘No Treasure but Hope’.
For Staples, one rule proved fruitful: known routes were to be avoided. “The last two albums were gradually built to a point of being finished in our studio from moments of playing and recording together. When we figured out how to present the songs live, different things happened to them. This time, we wanted to reverse that – to do something that was about being committed to a song together in a moment.”
The aim to capture the band’s onstage energy sparked a fast recording process. “Five weeks from the first notes recorded to the mastering,” marvels Staples, reflecting on a stretch that included acoustic rehearsals around a piano, six days playing live in a Paris studio and one day in London to record strings/brass.
Between compositions for the First World War commemorations (Ypres, 2014) and F Percy Smith’s microscopic movies (Minute Bodies, 2017), Tindersticks’ last album The Waiting Room crackled with world grooves and sounds. Staples has since delivered an experimental solo album (Arrhythmia, 2018) and a soundtrack to Claire Denis’ science-fiction film ‘High Life’.
Returning to Tindersticks, Staples brought with him “a deep sense of responsibility” for both the band and the philosophy behind their mid-2000s rebirth. “I wasn’t interested in nostalgia,” says Staples, “and I think everybody agreed with me, so we got our heads down and stuck to that. We’ll never be a young band again, or flavour of the month. But in terms of connecting with the music, with people and with ideas, the last 10 years have probably been the best 10 years of the band.”
Staples sketched out and wrote the lyrics to the songs in autumn 2018 in his new home on Ithaca, Greece. “People here say that Ithaca is the end of your journey,” he comments. “A final destination…” Meanwhile, the richly enveloping ‘No Treasure but Hope’ opens its arms to new journeys for the taking…
Photo credit: Richard Dumas
