The Waiting Room by Tindersticks. Courtesy Tindersticks
The Waiting Room by Tindersticks. Courtesy Tindersticks

Album review: The Waiting Room by Tindersticks is strangely uplifting and comforting



The Waiting Room

Tindersticks

(City Slang)

Four stars

For the past 25 years, no band has musically embodied the sound of a world-weary sigh quite as evocatively as Tindersticks. Nothing much changes on this, the Nottingham band’s 10th studio album, which is as strangely uplifting and comforting as the nine that came before it.

After the instrumental opener Follow Me, vocalist Stuart A Staples settles into a familiar, breathy groove on Second Chance Man – it's effortlessly suave, with trademark understatement.

The 50-year-old frontman has an economically dexterous way with words that, by comparison, can make even erudite listeners feel like their personal-expression abilities are on the level of a primary-school child.

As with many of Tindersticks’ previous albums, there is a feminine touch here, provided by guest vocalists.

Savages' Jehnny Beth adds sultry flourishes to We Are Dreamers!, but most haunting is Hey Lucinda, a duet with the late New York-born singer-songwriter Lhasa de Sela, who succumbed to cancer in 2010. The song stays largely the same in the melancholic world of Tindersticks, but their trusted love-death-sadness formula remains far from formulaic.

aworkman@thenational.ae

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  • Do not submit your application through the Easy Apply button on LinkedIn. Employers receive between 600 and 800 replies for each job advert on the platform. If you are the right fit for a job, connect to a relevant person in the company on LinkedIn and send them a direct message.
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Who are the Sacklers?

The Sackler family is a transatlantic dynasty that owns Purdue Pharma, which manufactures and markets OxyContin, one of the drugs at the centre of America's opioids crisis. The family is well known for their generous philanthropy towards the world's top cultural institutions, including Guggenheim Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate in Britain, Yale University and the Serpentine Gallery, to name a few. Two branches of the family control Purdue Pharma.

Isaac Sackler and Sophie Greenberg were Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York before the First World War. They had three sons. The first, Arthur, died before OxyContin was invented. The second, Mortimer, who died aged 93 in 2010, was a former chief executive of Purdue Pharma. The third, Raymond, died aged 97 in 2017 and was also a former chief executive of Purdue Pharma. 

It was Arthur, a psychiatrist and pharmaceutical marketeer, who started the family business dynasty. He and his brothers bought a small company called Purdue Frederick; among their first products were laxatives and prescription earwax remover.

Arthur's branch of the family has not been involved in Purdue for many years and his daughter, Elizabeth, has spoken out against it, saying the company's role in America's drugs crisis is "morally abhorrent".

The lawsuits that were brought by the attorneys general of New York and Massachussetts named eight Sacklers. This includes Kathe, Mortimer, Richard, Jonathan and Ilene Sackler Lefcourt, who are all the children of either Mortimer or Raymond. Then there's Theresa Sackler, who is Mortimer senior's widow; Beverly, Raymond's widow; and David Sackler, Raymond's grandson.

Members of the Sackler family are rarely seen in public.