2008 meldeten sich die Tindersticks nach fünf Jahren Pause mit erweitertem Line-up und dem famosen, von der Kritik einhellig gefeierten „The HUngry Saw“ zurück. 2010 folgt gleich das nächste Werk der Band um Stuart Staples: "Falling Down A Mountain" heißt das achte Album der Briten. Es entstand im Sommer letzten Jahres in zwei Studios (dem bandeigenen Le Chien Chanceux in Frankreich und ICP in Belgien) und ist ihr erstes Album für ihr neues Label 4AD. Mehr als zuvor ist es ein Werk der ganzen Gruppe, die sich mit Earl Harvin am Schlagzeug und David Kitt an der Gitarre verstärkt hat. Schon das atmosphärisch dichte, fiebrig-hypnotische Titelstück als Opener gibt die Richtung vor: Die Tindersticks ruhen sich auch im 17. Jahr ihres Bestehens nicht auf dem Erreichten aus, ergänzen ihren Trademark Sound um neue Einflüsse (das Velvet Underground-drogengeschwängerte „No Place So Alone“!), ohne sich zu verbiegen. Wunderschön auch das Duett von Tom Waits-Muse Mary Margaret O’Hara mit Stuart Staples in „Peanuts“, einer typischen Tindersticks-Ballade, die den Spagat zwischen federleicht und tief- bzw. hintergründig perfekt hinbekommt. Einzig „Harmony Around My Table“, auf dem Staples den gut gelaunten Crooner gibt, bleibt zumindest für mich ein Fremdkörper in einem starken Tindersticks Album, das mit seinen gut 45 Minuten Laufzeit ideale Voraussetzungen für die Vinyl-Veröffentlichung bietet.

(Glitterhouse)

After eighteen years, they still soldier on... After a somewhat revised version of Tindersticks broke their five-year recording silence with 1998's The Hungry Saw, it took less than two years for the group (again with a few modifications to the lineup) to compound that successful return with another new album — their eighth overall — which stands as perhaps even more of an achievement and pleasant surprise than its very fine predecessor. While Saw offered a few rare glimmers of positivity and sweetness from Stuart Staples and company, it was essentially business as usual for the perennially moody Britons. Falling Down a Mountain isn't exactly a major reinvention, either, but it does back up the golden-hued sky gracing its cover with some of their most upbeat and optimistic songs to date (keep in mind those are relative terms), and a liberal extension of the looseness they've been gradually settling into since 1999's Simple Pleasure. The six-and-a-half minute title track is immediately striking, with its simmering, asymmetrical, jazzy groove buoying a hypnotically simple vocal riff and some uninhibited soloing from trumpeter Terry Edwards. "Harmony Around My Table" is a bouncy soul-pop number that might hardly be recognizable as Tindersticks if not for Staples' inimitable quavering baritone (as always, an acquired taste, like fine wine), while the low-key lovers' duet "Peanuts" sports a charmingly simple, slightly silly lyric, and the twinkling ballad "Keep You Beautiful," though a typically mellow affair, is uncharacteristically, almost achingly sweet. Elsewhere, the album takes on a vaguely Western tinge (again echoing the dusty cover landscape), with the galloping, lustful "She Rode Me Down," Edwards' lonesome flügelhorn on the Morricone-esque instrumental "Hubbard Hills," and the gritty, downright driving "Black Smoke." Eventually — this being Tindersticks, after all — the darkness does creep in: the deceptively buoyant "No Place So Alone" seethes with the jealousy of a jilted lover, and by the penultimate "Factory Girls," we find Staples brooding alone, doused in melancholy, feebly asserting that "it's the wine that makes me sad, not the love I never had." It's a typically mournful, typically lovely Tindersticks moment, made all the more exquisite here in contrast to the increased stylistic range that came before it. Sometimes, it just takes a slight change in scenery to help you appreciate what you've always had.

(by K. Ross Hoffman, All Music Guide)