What would you have if you took the sharp rhythm and horn section of Morphine paired it with the lush but distressed orchestration Thee Silver Mt. Zion, and fronted it with Antony Hegarty cum Nick Cave singer? Class? Class? Where is your hands? Take them out of your pockets and give me the answer?!?! Well, I have been searching quite sometime now, often coming across the name Tindersticks and neglecting to dig deeper. Their 8th album, and third with with label mates Thee Silver Mt. Zion's Constellation Records, 'Falling Down A Mountain' is no album to neglect. It deserves a god damn pedestal and a couple surrounding beers, maybe a nice hearty meal and a dance afterwards. You have the ballads ('Keep You Beautiful'), the ominous instrumentals ('Hubbard Hills') and the dark rave-ups ('Black Smoke'). All excellently crafted with tight rhythm grooves, sparse atmospheric guitars and trumpet player Terry Edward's scorned playing. What else is there to demand? Oh right, vocalist and guitarist Stuart A. Staples voice ... The Nick Cave influence is obvious, but what Nick Cave hasn't delivered in his last few albums Stuart has outdone him and takes the medal for delivering the dark, menacing deadpan vocals that would scare the bark off the trees and send the local dogs under their owners porches. Shut the doors friends, double lock the front and back doors. Don't forget the bottle of whiskey and make sure you have the plushest chair for Stuart all set. Its going to a be long, interesting evening ... 9/10 --
Darryl Norsen (10 February, 2010)
