167LikesI hope she comes back soon. It sounded like she'd be great live.Originally Posted by darby
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Got 6 rows from stage for Peter Gabriel at Santa Barbara Bowl. APC tickets (discussed elsewhere).
But ya know- screw all that for now...
COACHELLA!!!
My line up next week--
Animal Collective
Arcade Fire
BAD
Bloody Beatroots
Cage the Elephant
Chemical Brothers
Death From Above 1979
Duran Duran
Elbow
Fistful Of Mercy
Foals
Interpol
Leftfield
London Suede
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
One Day As a Lion
PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Radio Dept
Sleigh Bells
Swell Season
The National
The Strokes
Warpaint
Wire
Oh, I said PJ Harvey twice... I like PJ Harvey...
Tindersticks tomorrow night! Can't wait. Gonna go to bed early so I can get to tomorrow sooner.
Last time for those of ya looking for some British soul to bring May in for a soft landing
http://www.luckmanarts.org/events/
Great night at Tindersticks! Thanks to all the LGKers who were there and hanging out when I got there (by the bar of course). Good to see you all represent!
I loved the show and so did my wife. I do have some mixed feelings since, although I knew going in the band were playing compositions to Denis' cinematic vision, I still was chomping at the bit for Stuart to let that baritone out of its box! We did get Tiny Tears which was absolute magic and will stay with me forever.
Overall I probably could use a little more context around the approach for this show. I am assuming each vignette was a cut from a segment of the film (films?) the band has collaborated with Denis on recently. Mondo can you provide some thoughts? Many of the film bits were interesting and often disturbing. I very much like being forced outside my little world into something I am not quite prepared for. My wife quipped "bizarre" at one point. Yes it was. But not in a bad way.
And of course would welcome thoughts from all. Great seeing LGK at this show- you guys rock!
It was a pleasure meeting you and your wife!
When I saw the set list a few weeks ago I was a little apprehensive about taking some first timers because of the nature of the show.
They were playing in select cities to promote their recently released bookset collection of Claire Denis soundtracks. Los Angeles is one of the few cities to get one of these shows, even though they didn't tour in the US to promote their most recent album, Falling Down a Mountain.
Tindersticks have had their songs used in a lot of soundtracks prior to the release of this set - "Tiny Tears", which was from their 2nd self-titled album, and "Running Wild", from Waiting for the Moon were both featured in prominent episoded of The Sopranos, the first when Tony was shot at the end of the first season, and the second in the penultimate episode, as Tony and his crew were holed up waiting for a war that was never going to come.
They had a promo-only cd called Tindersticks Marks Moods which featured a lot of their instrumental pieces and was sent to various film studios, so it makes sense that LA would be one of the few targets for this kind of show.
Personally, I absolutely loved it, but you could sense a little unease in the crowd at times. Tindersticks rarely talk on stage, and their shows are also rarely promoted - I had to dig around to find out what to expect, so I am sure that there were more than a few people in attendence expecting a normal show.
The way I see it, it was like having a favorite director release a series of short films, or an author putting out a one time novel in a completely different genre - something that you love and hold dear, but more of a "specialty act" than something you would point to as a real representation of the band to someone who wasn't familiar with their work.
As far as the show it self, I was impressed with how seamless it was - I love being allowed to figure things out for myself, develop my own interpretations, and not having to have individual pieces separated and explained. The film clips were sparse, violent, occasionally nasty - they worked well as a collage as they moved from one piece to the next, leaving then returning to each instead of working as a solid progression from one soundtrack to the next.
Plus anytime I get to hear "Trouble Every Day" live is a special occasion. One of the other vocal pieces was reworked into a song for Stuart Staples first solo release, Lucky Dog Recordings. I do have to admit, seeing as how they so seldom come to the US, that it would have been nice to have seen a few encores from their album pieces, but these guys don't trifle with stuff - they just do what they are going to do, and that's it.
I'm pretty much a Tindersticks virgin, but I thought the show was fantastic. I've heard some of their stuff before and, I think, I even have a copy of "Can Our Love..." somewhere, but I'm not familiar with any of their music. I went solely because of recommendations by Mondo, gescom and sonnyboy. And I'm really glad I did.
The first few songs they played I thought were good, but not great. I think mostly because they were kind of... I'm not sure how to describe it, but they didn't seem to have any effect on my mood at all. Not just the music, but the film playing in the background. It felt neutral to me. OK, this girl is floating in the water and we're repeating the same film clip over and over...
That changed 3 or 4 songs in, though. I don't have any idea what the name of the song was, but the film clip was from, I later found out, the movie "White Material" (which was just released by Criterion). Started with the dark room and the flashlight. As the flashlight is going across the sorta creepy masks on the wall and stuff. The music was dark and that's when I first really started getting into it. Then at the end of the clip, after they find the (I assume) dead body and the flashlight moves away and you see all the unmoving soldiers, that's when I was sold. That bit was an incredible combination of picture and sound. Extremely effective.
The other truly high point was the bit from the movie Trouble Every Day where the woman was eating the guy's face and slapping him around. Again, the combination of sound and visuals was ****ing fantastic. I was impressed as hell. I immediately whispered to gescom that I needed to see that movie. Of course, it doesn't look like it's been released on DVD in the US. Maybe Video Paradiso will have a decent bootleg?
Beyond that, my thoughts about the show were that I thought Stuart Staples had a beautiful voice that meshed really well with the music. I can see both why their live performances are so highly thought of and why it's maybe not as easy to appreciate it on CD. It sounds the same, but different. I don't know how to explain it, really.
Some of the score music was really fantastic, some of it was just pretty good. I was a big fan of all the stuff with the cello (which I'm kind of a sucker for anyway). I get the feeling that when I get around to acquiring the box set (it's only a matter of time), there will be a few discs in it that get quite a bit of play and one or two that I'll still like but won't listen to often.
As a whole, I was very impressed and I hope I get the chance to see them do a "regular" set live at some point.
Reply With Quote
Mondo Blando
