Tindersticks – “How He Entered” (Singles Going Steady)

Emmanuel Elone: More poetic than musician, Tindersticks is one of those artists who is captivating in ways that no mainstream musician is. The soft, melancholic guitar and horns complement his enigmatic and gorgeous turn of phrases. It’s music that requires multiple listens to fully grasp, and I’ll gladly put it on replay in order to understand all that Tindersticks has to offer. [7/10]

Paul Duffus: Everything’s coming up Tindersticks! Their old tunes (“City Sickness” and their cover of Pavement’s “Here”) were the highlight of ‘The End of the Tour’, last year’s gloopily sentimental and altogether terrible David Foster Wallace movie. And now they’re back with the treat of a new album and tour. The band have shifted styles quite significantly over the years, from album to album, but if there is a familiar ‘classic’ Tindersticks sound, then “How He Entered” arguably embodies it. Over a beautiful bed of strings and piano and the band at their most restrained, Stuart Staples talks of dreams, broken hearts, Frazzles, and “the back of a Transit van”, evoking a world of romance and squalid desperation (Copyright Every Tindersticks Review Ever). It’s a tune that confirms that, nearly 25 years on from their formation, Tindersticks are still number one in a league of one, with all the tragicomedy and wonderful muted glory which that implies. [9/10]

Pryor Stroud: “How He Entered” is from Tindersticks’ characteristically somnolent LP The Waiting Room and, fittingly, it’s a track that ushers in a cast of characters through a single door, marking time and anticipation through a ponderous piano reverie and a nimble, unobtrusive rhythmic backdrop. It’s a lullaby that presents reality unfiltered and uneditorialized, full of lonely, desperate, emotionally and physically scarred men, but that still manages to ease your mind — to put you in a daze. However, there’s something unmistakably portentous here as well that keeps you awake: the men keeping entering, keep coming in, suitcases in-hand and secrets in their pockets, and no one thinks to leave. The door, meanwhile, never closes. [6/10]

Chris Ingalls: The whole thing has a sort of mid-period Van Morrison vibe, the kind of soulful meditative Irish number you’d find on Into the Music or Beautiful Vision. The spoken word aspect of the song seems just a wee bit pretentious, but something tells me that it’s direct and from the heart. It’s a pretty flawless arrangement that may seem to some as a bit too safe, but it’s actually — the way I hear it — very calculated in its simplicity and direct emotional connection. The muted, low-key horns definitely give off a Van Morrison feel, or — if you want to get really deep — something you’d hear on an early Tanita Tikaram album. [7/10]

Chad Miller: Sounding a lot like Natalie Pratt’s “Reprise”, “How He Entered” contains an interesting narrative and pretty music to document it with although it really doesn’t seem to move much. [6/10]

SCORE: 7.00