Chamber rockers Tindersticks stay dark and soulful on The Waiting Room

Tindersticks’ suit-wearing stalwarts of soulful, crepuscular chamber rock have spent the past quarter-century tinkering with the classic palettes of lounge, soul, and countrified baroque pop, creating a body of work that’s shockingly eclectic for a band that pretty much only writes downbeat songs about romance and self-pity. Led by the head-cold baritone of frontman Stuart A. Staples, the band has never been easy to place, being more string-backed indie fellow travelers—the missing link between Nick Cave and early Belle & Sebastian—than true indie rockers, and a “love one song, love ’em all” cult act if there ever was one. Though it’s as moody as any latter-day Tindersticks release, new album The Waiting Room finds the band incorporating elements of funk and central African pop, but strictly on its own terms: some muted slap bass here, a narcotized highlife guitar line there.
As Staples has aged into his once prematurely gray hair, his band—currently a five-piece, seemingly based everywhere except their original hometown of Nottingham—has perfected the aesthetic of the trembling, smoky sad-sack ballad. Though the band members’ taste in instrumentation skews toward the late ’60s and early ’70s (vintage keyboards, reverb pedals, vibraphone, glockenspiel, etc.), they have never been fastidious revivalists; this is a group of musicians that never tries anything it can’t internalize. Here, only the Afro-rock “Help Yourself” sounds like imitation—and even then, it’s still captivating, with Staples’ deep voice working itself up over horn lines and complicated rhythms. (American-born Earl Harvin, a longtime session drummer, remains one of the strongest features of the current line-up.) Since losing three of its founding members (including seemingly essential multi-instrumentalist Dickon Hinchliffe) a decade ago, the band has made keyboardist Dave Boulter a central part of its sound, and his wheezing organs and buzzy Wurlitzer electric pianos set the wistful mood of The Waiting Room.