AMG Review of Trouble Every Day

Thom Jurek
All Music Guide

With Trouble Every Day, Stuart Staples and company enter into a creative partnership with director Claire Denis for the second time. Their first collaboration on Ms. Denis' #Nenette et Boni was a striking enough success to get the soundtrack released stateside, despite the fact that there was only one vocal track on it. The rest featured Tindersticks playing a graceful and warm version of chamber jazz and serial music. As a film, #Trouble Every Day is a very different animal than its predecessor. The subject matter here deals with a woman who picks up various men, has relations with them, and then, er, eats them. The film caused dozens to walk out of the ~Cannes Film Festival in disgust for its graphic depictions of sex, violence, and cannibalism. Tindersticks add plenty of weight to Ms. Denis' film with a score that is alternately elegant, lush, dark, and subtly moving. There is great tenderness in this music as it goes about reflecting on the scenes inside the film, and as an album it holds up on its own as a largely instrumental, string-laden, moody meditation on unrequited, ravenous love. There is no rock & roll to speak of on this set; this is Tindersticks' alter ego, their grand classical and impressionist jazz pretensions realized with grace and aplomb, and their twin fascination with Debussy and Gil Evans given utterance. This is a gorgeous record, with a couple of takes of the film's theme song that are worth the price of the album for Staples' luxuriantly despondent vocals, and ironically, the masterful restraint Tindersticks manage to exercise when employing their instrumental excesses in the cinema. This music is beautiful enough to stand alone.