Tindersticks

The Notts sophisticates’ life in sound

“IT gets under your skin,” says Stuart Staples of Ithaca, the Greek island he now calls home. “I’ve been coming here for the last 23 years, so it’s been a growing thing. I’m in the centre of a bustling town, very much in the energy of the place. It’s not like I have a villa on a beach somewhere.”

It was on Ithaca that Staples wrote the new Tindersticks album, No Treasure But Hope, the latest in a long line of quietly experimental records that the group have produced. “Here it’s about letting your mind wander,” he explains, “whereas my studio in France is more of a workplace.”

The original Tindersticks lineup collapsed in the mid-2000s, but Staples, keyboardist David Boulter and guitarist Neil Fraser have rebuilt the group over the past decade, vowing to resist the pull of nostalgia. “I never expected to be in a great band again – the first version of the band was very organic and spontaneous and full of joy in so many ways – but now it’s like a second realisation, as older guys, in a different way.” TOM PINNOCK

TINDERSTICKS

THIS WAY UP, 1993

From a kitchen in Queen’s Park, west London, came this epic, sumptuous debut

Individually and collectively we’d spent the previous eight or nine years making demo tapes and sending them to record companies, but there was no interest in Nottingham music from the industry. At the end of 1990, we moved to London, and I was fortunate to get a job at the Rough Trade shop. I think being exposed to a different type of creativity was very freeing – it was a do-it-yourself time, labels like Domino were starting, and there was a