Music has the power to« dress up»with notes many moments of our lives, so that even after many years when you hear an old song automatically your memories and feelings from that era, that are connected to this song, come to mind. For me then, Tindersticks are inherent to my adolescence and even with the gray period of graduates' exams. I had seen them live and in 1998 RODON (Athens) and in 1999 SFENTONA (Athens) where they were just shocking.
Ten years later, they return to Athens in Badminton Theatre trying to rekindle their relationship with their audience. Within these ten years a lot has changed: the Tindersticks had come close to breaking up and from the founding members the only ones that remain Stuart Staples , Neil Fraser and David Boulter .The band also released three albums ( Can Our Love 2001, Waiting For The Moon 2003, The Hungry Saw 2008 ) with fewer complex forms than before and with more soul elements within the boundaries of their familiar sound. In my humble opinion these discs are less interesting and can not be compared with previous jobs.
The Athenian audience had submerged the huge Badminton Theatre and the room was absolutely full. Tindersticks took the stage at 10:30 with a very theatrical way and played the Intro from The Hungry Saw and followed the Yesterday Tomorrows and The Flicker of a little girl from their last album. In the beginning they were somewhat frozen, and felt that there was no natural flow to their songs which of course is understandable given the fact that there were many musical instruments and had to be a lot of changes. But then they found their pace and the audience got warm enough. They played a lot from The Hungry Saw, such as Feel the sun, E-Type, Hungry saw, and Boobar come back to me, causing people's excitment, and other songs from previous albums such as She's gone, Dying slowly, My oblivion in a top performance. They had two encores where they played, during the first, two successes from the past Her and My sister and the second closed the concert with The Not knowing .
The audience kept asking them to play most of their old hits, but didn't get their way and this is, on the one hand, natural as you can not fit within two hours all of your songs. On the other hand, we can not ignore songs from which people learned to love the band, such as Talk to me, Mistakes (my favorite), Whiskey & Water, Jism, Travelling Light. I also think that they could have played more dynamically performances of songs and they could have rouse people. Perhaps this has to do with the performance taking place in a theater and not a music scene, therefore a more acoustic performance had been chosen. That having been said, Tindersticks were very good and I am glad I managed to hear the raucous voice of Stuart Staples in person.
P.S. Wikipedia states that Stuart Staples inspired the name Tindersticks from a box of matches which had been found discarded on a beach in Greece! What? We throw garbage on the beach? Come on now! It must be propaganda!