Rating: NNN
Saying that the Tindersticks have cheered up on their new Can Our Love album is a major overstatement. Mumbler Stuart Staples has never seemed capable of being in a good mood before, and that doesn’t change here. What has shifted slightly is the tone of Staples’s perpetual bleakness. The foreboding strings and imminent sense of utter doom of past Tindersticks records are gone, replaced with lighter arrangements, a fat Fender Rhodes and a more soulful swing. The whole mess is still blanketed in a damp, depressing fog, but at least there’s a ray of hope this time.
