Can Our Love...

The same old sombre samba, perhaps, but with a renewed sense of direction, it's threatening to take them somewhere fantastic.

In the face of today's painfully formulaic R&B/hip hop, they come off as the most soulful act on the planet. [#51, p.123]

But while the swanky compositions on Love can fade into the background like velvet-shrouded ambience, this same passion also makes these songs mesmerizing, allowing them to remain in the gently muted spotlight just as easily. [Aug 2001, p.104]

At 45 minutes, Can Our Love... is Tindersticks' most concise album yet, and it sacrifices nothing in content. Eight songs may not seem like much for a full album, but it's all this band needs to make a fully rewarding listen that only gets richer the more you visit.

Sleepy and soulful, Can Our Love . . . is delightfully powerful in an understated way.

The arrangements are subtle but complete, creating a thickly romantic feeling that provides an excellent backdrop for Staples' soul-drenched voice. [#11]

Quiet pleasures, but worth seeking out. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

Can Our Love... finds the band still mining a quirky romantic sensibility, but with more honest soul than ever.

Slow burners like "Dying Slowly" and "Sweet Release" smolder like Chesterfields in the rain. [Sep 2001, p.164]

The loosest record yet in Tindersticks' decade-long existence.

The settings are spacious, the rhythms stately and Stuart Staples croons woozily about how it's all gone horribly wrong.

On a couple of tracks, on this their fifth and finest studio album, singer Stuart Staples doesn't actually sound like he's mumbling through the pain of all too recent root canal treatment.

Tindersticks' trajectory, in fact, does have its affinities with R.E.M.'s: an unfairly maligned Difficult Third Album clears the decks and the lead singer's nasal passages, and what's gone from the later work, however accomplished it may be, is that startling strangeness, the rare, eerie thrill of hearing something that sounds only like itself.

On Can Our Love..., Tindersticks get heavily into Seventies soul, which expands their sound with more depth than ever before.

Can Our Love... is a minimalistic jewel, a soul wonder and an anomaly in a pop world.