Video interview with singer, guitarist Stuart Staples of the British pop band Tindersticks

As Tindersticks release their brilliant new album The Something Rain, Jude Rogers talks to Stuart Staples and David Boulter about their present and reflect on the past. Twenty years ago, six young men from Nottingham – dishevelled of hair and tailored of suit – started making demo tapes together. Then they changed their name, stopped trying to fit in, and the bones of the first Tindersticks album started slotting together. Twenty years later, the three men that are left – Stuart Staples, David Boulter and Neil Fraser remain, Dickon Hincliffe, Al Macaulay, and Mark Colwill are long gone – have found peace again, somehow.

This album," Staples tells me, "was not going to leave the studio until we were convinced of every moment, the angle of every turn. An artistic triumph of Tindersticks' unlikely post-hiatus third act, The Something Rain is rich with those moments, angles, and turns.

Longtime Tindersticks organist/pianist David Boulter doesn’t usually listen to his own records. But when I asked him to rank the Tindersticks discography from best to worst, he took the assignment seriously. I started at the beginning and played the first couple of albums and thought, ‘I don't know if I really want to listen to all of my past,’ he told me. (Curtains, the band’s third album, he estimates he hadn’t heard in 15 years. David Boulter: The worst one, for me, would be the album called Waiting for the Moon. Because it was the last album we made as the old Tindersticks before we broke down and took a break. I think it's tainted by that a lot.

The Something Rain, the ninth album by Tindersticks, has been widely praised by both fans and critics. A bold reassertion of the bands sound and ethos, it has been favourably compared to some of their well-loved, classic early albums. musicOMH: You played Tindersticks II at the Barbican in 2006. Would you consider playing more full album shows in the future? The renewed appreciation of looking at albums as complete pieces of work seems well suited to your music. I think Tindersticks are definitely an albums band. DB: I would like to. The film shows helped to see different ways of presenting ourselves. I wouldn’t like to go on tour playing an old album.

Tindersticks (1993 album). Tindersticks was named album of the year by Melody Maker and placed at number 13 on the NME's equivalent list

Tindersticks Tindersticks. Of course, it’d be harder to sympathize with the lowly bottom-feeder of a singer if Tindersticks’ music was hard, crushing, and abrasive, or even just poorly played – but no. It’s soft and mournful, a delicate chamber pop that is essentially the cornerstone upon which The National would later build their masterpieces in more than a decade’s time to follow.