Tindersticks - Distractions (LP)

Tindersticks have always found a way to make the room feel smaller, the lights dimmer, and the night a little longer. Distractions, released by City Slang in February 2021, leans into that feeling with a new kind of restraint. The band pares back the chamber-soul glow of No Treasure but Hope and slips into a cooler, more electronic palette. It still sounds unmistakably like Tindersticks, but the edges are shadier and the pulse runs on drum machines, synth fog, and space.

The opener, Man Alone (Can’t Stop the Fadin’), sets the terms. It rides a patient groove for an unhurried stretch, panning from a faint throb to something hypnotic. Stuart A. Staples repeats that mantra until it becomes a kind of spell, the band letting little details flicker at the margins. Keys bloom and recede. Guitar figures arrive like headlights on a distant road. It is dance music only in the sense that you feel it in your body first, then realize how quietly it has tunneled into your head.

Covers have always served as little windows into this band’s taste, and the choices here are sharp. Their take on Television Personalities’ You’ll Have to Scream Louder trades brittle jangle for a prowling bassline and a tougher stance, which makes the lyric’s agitation land with fresh force. Then there is Neil Young’s A Man Needs a Maid, a song that can tip into melodrama if handled carelessly. Tindersticks strip it to the bone. Staples barely raises his voice, and the arrangement leaves air around every phrase. The effect feels like overhearing a confession in a quiet hallway, not a grand pronouncement from a stage.

Between those poles sit the album’s most intimate moments. A French-language detour sinks into a low-lit hush, with keys and pulses arranged as negative space as much as sound. Another song arrives like late-night correspondence, voice close to the mic, creak of room tone intact. You can tell this music was built with care, probably passed around between the band’s long-time circle and honed in their own space in France. It has the loose-tight quality of players who know when to step back and when to lean in.

Distractions drew strong notices when it landed. The Guardian praised its austere mood and the way the band bent their sound toward minimal electronics without losing their soul. Pitchfork heard the same risk and called out the opener’s trance-like pull. Metacritic filed it under generally favorable, which tracks. This record does not beg for instant applause. It invites you to meet it halfway, then rewards that patience.

On vinyl, it really hits. The low end on Man Alone feels rounder, the small percussive taps pop out of the speakers, and Staples’ baritone sits in that warm, familiar pocket. If you have a quiet evening and a steady needle, Distractions vinyl is the way to go. For crate diggers hunting Tindersticks albums on vinyl, this sits nicely next to The Something Rain and The Waiting Room as a late-night trilogy of sorts. I’ve seen copies tucked in the staff-picks bin at my local Melbourne record store, the kind of place where the clerk will nod in approval if you bring it to the counter. And if you are nowhere near a shop, it is easy enough to buy Tindersticks records online from the usual suspects. Fans who collect Tindersticks vinyl know that City Slang’s pressings tend to be handled with care.

There is a cinematic thread that runs through all of this too, unsurprising for a band that has scored multiple Claire Denis films. You can hear that sense of framing and negative space in the way songs begin and end, the way tension builds without obvious peaks. The strings and reeds that once defined their sound appear more like ghost images, while the electronics do the heavy lifting of mood. It is not cold. It is careful.

If you came to this band for romance and resignation, that is still here. It just arrives with a nocturnal pulse and a little more shadow. Distractions feels like a late entry that deepens the story, not a detour for novelty’s sake. Put it on when the apartment is quiet, when the city outside finally exhale. Let the side flip be the only interruption. And if you are building a collection of vinyl records Australia wide, this is a keeper that will get real play, not just spine time.