A thrilling, revelatory debut, Tindersticks is a chamber pop masterpiece of romantic elegance and gutter debauchery. Within the framework of a remarkably consistent and mesmerizingly dank atmosphere, the group covers a stunning amount of ground ? Her is a crashing flamenco number, The Walt Blues is a tipsy organ instrumental, and Paco de Renaldo's Dream is an impenetrable cinematic monologue punctuated by subdued guitars, pianos, and strings. Stuart Staples' bacchanalian songs are obsessed with fluids, both bodily (Blood, Jism) and otherwise (Nectar, Whiskey and Water, Raindrops); no topic is too personal or too disturbing ? Piano Song is frightening in its callousness, while City Sickness is an unflinching examination of emotional and physical desperation. Fascinatingly constructed and strikingly ambitious, Tindersticks is insidiously labyrinthine: the music speaks softly but carries tremendous weight, and its hold grows more and more unbreakable with each listen.