I’ve drifted away from Tindersticks in recent years, but there was time, back in the 90s and first half of the 00s, when I devoured everything they recorded and released. I took in loads of live shows, travelling down to London on a couple of occasions, including one particularly memorable summer night at Somerset House in June 2002 when, by coincidence, one of the Concorde planes was high above us as it made its descent into Heathrow Airport.
By this point in time, they had released more than twenty singles or EPs, without ever seriously looking as if they were chasing mainstream success. I particularly liked that the release of each single was something for fans to look forward to, given they usually came with a mixture of previously unreleased songs, cover version and live tracks, with the latter so often capturing how songs were differently arranged/performed from year to year.
Back in 1997, two singles were lifted from the LP Curtains, the second of which was Rented Rooms. The surprise this time around, on CD1, was a big band version of the song –
mp3 : Tindersticks – Rented Rooms
mp3 : Tindersticks – Rented Rooms (swing version)
mp3 : Tindersticks – Make Believe
Make Believe was an otherwise unreleased song. It’s kind of Tindersticks unplugged, and I imagine this is how many of their songs were initially worked up in rehearsals to identify which of them should them then be developed further with strings etc.
CD2 was also worth getting a hold of thanks to the live recordings of three tracks lifted from what was a week’s residency at the ICA. London in November 1996.
mp3: Tindersticks – Cherry Blossoms (live)
mp3: Tindersticks – She’s Gone (live)
mp3: Tindersticks – Rumba (live)
The original versions of Cherry Blossoms and She’s Gone can be found on Tindersticks (II), released in 1995, while Rumba is an instrumental, originally recorded for the soundtrack to the 1996 film, Nénette et Boni.
Rented Rooms reached #56 in the UK charts in November 1997. Given it would have got next to no radio airplay, it shows just how many of us diehard fans went out and handed over our hard-earned cash.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
What. A. Band.
Flimflamfan
I almost always like the first song I hear during the day. No matter what it is. But “Rented Rooms” blew me away this morning. I particularly like the swing version.