After eighteen years, they still soldier on... After a somewhat revised version of
Tindersticks broke their five-year recording silence with 2008'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 fluegelhorn 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. ~ K. Ross Hoffman
![Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness [Clean]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/5099997855323_p0_v3_s90x140.jpg "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness [Clean]")
