This was the first of four Tindersticks albums I bought, spread across a period of eighteen months from spring 2001 onwards. I like all these albums — else I wouldn't have bought more — though I can't claim to know any of them intimately.
The song that sprung out at me, and which I do know well, is Travelling Light — a duet with a similar dynamic to Fairytale of New York with the woman disabusing the man of his self-romanticising delusions. Often it makes my heart burst.
Until today I thought, wrongly, that the woman singing on Travelling Light was Isabella Rossellini, but I see that I got this mixed up with A Marriage Made in Heaven, on which she features. I remember playing this early on at D's 40th birthday party in 2001, imagining that everyone would break off from their conversations to ask me what it was. But you know how it goes when you play your favourite records: no-one even turned their heads.
I wanted to see Tindersticks when we went to the Crossing Border festival in Amsterdam in 2002, but by the time we got to the venue it was full. Ditto, their 2003 shows at the Royal Court Theatre were sold out by the time I got my finger out. I could have seen them at the Hammersmith Apollo later that year, but it's not my favourite venue. And now they seem to be on (possibly terminal?) sabbatical, with individual members working on film soundtracks. Stuart Staples, Tindersticks' singer, was supposed to talk at an event at the Ciné Lumière last October to launch a season of Claire Denis films (since he scored her most recent film). He didn't show up.
What I should do is put all four of my Tindersticks albums on my iPod Shuffle and keep playing them until I know them backwards.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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