a fourth conversation piece...'tindersticks - mountain of gems'

‘Music, is to me, proof of the existence of God’ – so said the late, and very great Kurt Vonnegut.  What he was really getting at in saying this (it seems) is that music is extraordinarily magical.  Three minutes of popular song can change one's physical chemistry, typically for the better.

At the moment I am sitting, nursing a bank holiday hang over – cheap red wine, some whiskey that tasted like, and could have been motor oil.  And I’m listening to a compilation I made of Tindersticks.  I called it ‘Mountain of Gems’.  It seemed an appropriate title, one which encapsulates the power and magic of their music.

Tindersticks were formed in Nottingham in the mid 90s; their first video they made with Pulp – however, since then they have largely eschewed the lime-light.  Perhaps their best record, the stirring and achingly beautiful Simple Pleasures, is currently out of print;  and while they will undoubtably fill the Barbican Centre this autumn when they play their one London date of 2013, they have enjoyed as much if not more success outside of the UK, particularly in Europe (at the time of writing, they have just finished their sixth film score for French director Claire Denis).

In vocalist Stuart Staples they have a man whose rich, deep baritone can fill auditoriums and find space in the smallest box-bedrooms.  As well as one of the finest lyricists in pop history.  His lyrics deal with unrequited love, fumbled relationships and bruised egos.  He has the gift of saying an awful lot in not so many words. 

It is Staples’ voice and words accompanied by the evocative musical arrangements of (variously) Dickon Hinchcliffe and David Boulter - acoustic guitars, strings, organs and brass – that makes Tindersticks the perfect soundtrack to the flayed tapestry of life, as well as one of the best tonics.  They are like cognac for the soul.

They are also proof, to echo Vonnegut, of the existence of God.

And if God, as is also often said, is love, then at the heart of love is humility.  Tindersticks music has helped teach me humility in some awkward moments in life, and I am all the better for that, and for them – they are magic.  I love you, Tindersticks: I am very humbly yours!