Tindersticks – The Waiting Room

★★★

Released January 22nd, 2016 on City Slang Records

Tightly wound, evocative, spring-loaded songs with lush instrumentation and funky little grooves:  it’s a Tindersticks album, and a particularly good one.  Not as good as one of their big epics from the 1990s like Tindersticks, or Curtains, but a worthy addition to a pretty solid discography.  Then again, that’s also the biggest problem with The Waiting Room.  It’s a good Tindersticks album, and that’s it.  There’s no dynamic reach here, no sense of urgency or intensity.  It’s an album by a band that’s already proven that they can do this sort of in-the-pocket white funk by the barrel-load, so one might be tempted to ask what the hell the point is in 2016.  Sure, it makes a great background album; it’s both interesting and inoffensive, so it makes for a perfect cocktail record, but there’s nothing much of worth beyond that.  If you want perfection of form there are earlier Tindersticks albums; if you’re looking to reach out of the comfort zone and find something new, The Waiting Room is not that album.