Review: 'Falling Down A Mountain' - Tindersticks

Given their seemingly acrimonious dissolution after the release of Waiting For The Moon back in 2003, it was suggested that Tindersticks had perhaps exhausted their unique - some would say limited - sound and the time was right for them to fade away quietly.
Two solo records by front man Stuart Staples - including the quite lovely Leaving Songs - seemed to confirm the sense that the band's end was indeed terminal. Then, from nowhere in 2008, it was announced that the band had been rehearsing, recording and, lo and behold, finished an album; the magnificent The Hungry Saw. And suddenly it felt as if the band had never been away.
In many ways they hadn't, and if The Hungry Saw was the record which confirmed there was life left in the band, Falling Down A Mountain seems like one long celebration of this fact.
The Hungry Saw may have sounded like a record that had taken the band 5 years to make, Falling Down A Mountain, however, is Saw's cheeky younger brother - a breezy rush through Tindersticks' musical pallette which casually affirms the band's reinvigoration.
There's a looseness, a frivolity even, about the opening track which sets the tone for the rest of the record. Over 6 minutes in length, 'Falling Down A Mountain' sounds almost like a rehearsal, a sound-check of the band's disparate contributions which barely align themselves to Staples' muted vocal, or, more pertinently, Terry Edwards' caterwauling trumpet around which the song is constructed. And yet it all sounds utterly like Tindersticks should in 2010.
If 'Keep You Beautiful' revisits more familiar Tindersticks terrain, 'Harmony Around My Table' sounds celebratory - all handclaps and la la las - in spite of a lyric which mischievously suggests that "I found a penny, I picked it up, On the day I had some luck, But now that was two weeks last Tuesday, Since then there's been a sliding feeling."
There's the ubiquitous and perfectly pitched duet, this time with Mary Margaret O'Hara on 'Peanuts'. 'Black Smoke' and 'No Place So Alone', in their unique ways, carry the album along with bristling intent until the album's centrepiece. 'Factory Girls' builds from its delicate piano intro (reminiscent of 'Cherry Blossoms'), pivoting around the ruefulness of Staples' refrain that ''It's the wine that makes me sad, Not the love I never had'', ultimately leading to a 'Tiny Tears'-esque conclusion. It's a masterful song which manages to tread a fine line between pathos and self-pity.
The album closes out with 'Piano Music', one of two instrumentals on the album (the other - 'Hubbard Hills' - is one of the few bum notes on the record, lost in its own blandness) which draws the record to a close as epically and compellingly as the title track opens it. Falling Down A Mountain then is no reinvention, more a glorious reaffirmation of this very special group's continuing existence. How wonderful it is to have them back.
Falling Down A Mountain goes on general release on January 25th. There's also a deluxe package avaliable from Constellation records here.