The Hungry Saw

Tindersticks have never failed to satisfy anyone looking not only for sadness but also those looking for albums that make you feel and songs that will stick with you for a long time. The Hungry Saw is classic Tindersticks.

England’s most defiantly rococo pop group can make a richly detailed record without really trying.

It may sound less dense, but The Hungry Saw is as dark, mysterious and seductive as ever. [May 2008, p.141]

Flawless.

The years away may have recharged Staples's batteries, but the music itself sounds much the same, which is a good thing.

The Hungry Saw may make Leonard Cohen’s stuff sound positively giddy, but it’s a positive turn for the Tindersticks.

THe British balladeers have returned after a long layoff as elegantly miserable as ever. [Oct 2008, p.83]

Few songwriters are capable of making misery sound so elegant, and even desirable.

Tindersticks have proven themselves to be a rare exception to what feels like a general rule of let-down albums by reunited bands. [Fall 2008, p.84]

It’s not an incredibly remarkable record, but when a band is this consistent for this long, it’s hard to fault it.

Ultimately, it comes down to the vagaries of taste, but measured against their previous output and current contenders, The Hungry Saw is a sleeper of a bar-chapped, morosely drunk record.

The Hungry Saw's temperate approach feels like the work of a band who are grateful for a new lease on life, but not sure exactly what to do with it, proffering brief experiments that amount to little more than amusing curios (the self-explanatory "The Organist Entertains") or instrumentals that sound like guide tracks waiting for a vocal supplement (the tremoloed psychedelic samba of "E Type").

What will draw fans old and new to this record, however, is the melancholia of Tindersticks frontman Stuart Staples' vocals, which become especially poignant on the forlorn 'Other Side Of The World.'

The one slight that could be pinned on the The Hungry Saw is that there’s very little here that couldn’t slot seamlessly into any of the group’s output over the last 16 years.

The band were making good music before they split, and the revamped lineup have picked up right where the previous incarnation left off.

Led by mercurial crooner Stuart Staples, the current lineup’s grand balladry is more stately and slow-boiled than ever.

Tindersticks have returned refreshed, but some of the old dissolute glamour is gone.

There's no stand-out to match 'Tiny Tears' or 'Marbles' but Stuart Staples's crumpled voice and the distinctively intricate arrangements summon Lee Hazlewood's tear-flecked, bruised spirit.