Review: Tindersticks captivate Warwick Arts Centre crowd with moving live show
- Tindersticks performed at Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry on Saturday April 30th 2016
- With a mixture of material including latest record The Waiting Room in full, Tindersticks played an enthralling show in a dark setting
Bands like Tindersticks will never find themselves without an audience. Whether you’re familiar with their vast back catalogue or not, if you fail to be moved by their live set, you are simply made of stone.
At 8pm sharp the band members slowly flood the dark stage of the Butterworth Hall to modest applause, after the kind of punctuality only really expected of theatres and art centres. Covering Peggy Lee’s 1954 movie soundtrack ‘Johnny Guitar’ is first order of business, and throughout the song (and the first few songs of the set) you can here a pin drop in the auditorium. This allows for the unmistakable and fragile baritone of front man Stuart A. Staples to captivate the silent crowd for the first thirty minutes of the show, which see’s representations from both the early 90s side of Tindersticks, right up to 2012’s ‘The Something Rain’.
“Thank you very much, we’ll be back in 20 minutes to play The Waiting Room for you”. Staples alludes to the 2016 and eleventh studio album from the band, which as promised they return to play in full after a short break. The large black drapes have been pulled back to reveal a huge cinema screen which soon illuminates with intricate projections to welcome the band back to the stage.
Each piece of music on the eleven track album is accompanied by a special film, commissioned by Vincent Moon’s La Blogothèque Productions, and each assigned to a different director. The films are synchronized perfectly as the band dip in and out of each track, with some of the more upbeat numbers truly justifying the reaction from a now amped-up Butterworth Hall.
The album is so staggeringly beautiful that it’s over before you really realize it’s begun. “Thanks for coming” whispers Staples, eliciting a spontaneous standing ovation from a small portion of the hardcore followers in tonight’s crowd. As the band leave the stage, the foot stomping and whooping ensues, and after a few minutes they are back to play a couple more fan favorites.
‘Show Me Everything’ restarts the show, and the band are right back into it. They power through a clear high point of the evening with ‘This Fire of Autumn’, and finally round off the two and a half hour set with ‘A Night So Still’. This time the entire room is on their feet, applauding a band who for the past 25 years have cemented their place as one of the country’s most cherished live acts. Tonight they serenaded their small but loyal following the same way they always have done, and the multimedia element has given their output a whole new dimension.
Photographs by Zoe Shannon
Setlist
Johnny Guitar
Medicine
She’s Gone
Boobar Come Back to Me
The Other Side of the World
Sleepy Song
My Oblivion
The Waiting Room Full album
Show Me Everything
This Fire of Autumn
A Night So Still
