Tindersticks will release their remarkable new album 'No Treasure but Hope' on November 15th via City Slang, and it contains what Stuart Staples calls the band’s first love song - online for the first time today.

Commenting on the meridional, sunkissed track, Staples explains: “I’ve always written love songs but they’re always, ‘I love you – but…’. There are always problems! But I think of ‘Pinky’ as my first love song, which came as a surprise to me.”

The track comes accompanied by a striking video, directed by Staples, of which he says: “The chorus for 'Pinky in the daylight' came to me through the flapping canvas of the sun shade on the deck of the old blue ferry leaving the island - A rare moment of contentment and calm. A simple love song in complicated times. I wanted to make a film that captured the beauty of the island and the beauty of Suzanne. A love letter in Super 8 film.“

Watch “Pinky in the Daylight” below.

Additionally, Tindersticks have announced more dates as a part of their extensive European tour beginning 29th January in Belgium and ending 24th May in Ireland, and more US shows on top of their Brooklyn Performance.

Tindersticks UK dates:

Sunday 2nd February 2020 – BRIGHTON – Dome tickets
Friday 22nd May 2020 – LONDON – Soutbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall tickets

A full list of international live dates can be found via the band’s official website.

Three years since their last album proper, singer Stuart Staples decided Tindersticks’ return called for something special.

“I felt we needed to be able to make something meaningful,” he says. No Tindersticks album has lacked meaning, of course, but these mavens of intimate, expansive mood song dig deep and diversify beautifully on ‘No Treasure but Hope’. Rich in intuitive warmth, lush melodies and an inquisitive spirit, it’s an album that casts a fresh light on Tindersticks’ core qualities, bathed in the glow of a band intent on rediscovering what they can do.

For Staples, one rule proved fruitful: known routes were to be avoided. “The last two albums were gradually built to a point of being finished in our studio from moments of playing and recording together. When we figured out how to present the songs live, different things happened to them. This time, we wanted to reverse that – to do something that was about being committed to a song together in a moment.”

The aim to capture the band’s onstage energy sparked a fast recording process. “Five weeks from the first notes recorded to the mastering,” marvels Staples, reflecting on a stretch that included acoustic rehearsals around a piano, six days playing live in a Paris studio and one day in London to record strings/brass. That climate enabled these five most unselfish of players to really listen to one another.

The result is an album that upholds the band’s career-long commitment to interior exploration with a passion.

Between compositions for the First World War commemorations (Ypres, 2014) and F Percy Smith’s microscopic movies (Minute Bodies, 2017), Tindersticks’ last album ‘The Waiting Room’ crackled with world grooves and sounds. Staples has since delivered an experimental solo album (Arrhythmia, 2018) and a soundtrack to Claire Denis’ science-fiction film ‘High Lif’e, strengthening the band’s productive ties to the filmmaker with vocal help (on ‘Willow’) from the actor Robert Pattinson.

Returning to Tindersticks, Staples brought with him “a deep sense of responsibility” for both the band and the philosophy behind their mid-2000s rebirth. “I wasn’t interested in nostalgia,” says Staples, “and I think everybody agreed with me, so we got our heads down and stuck to that. We’ll never be a young band again, or flavour of the month. But in terms of connecting with the music, with people and with ideas, the last 10 years have probably been the best 10 years of the band.”

Staples sketched out and wrote the lyrics to the songs in autumn 2018 in his new home on Ithaca, Greece. “People here say that Ithaca is the end of your journey,” he comments. “A final destination…” Meanwhile, the richly enveloping ‘No Treasure but Hope’ opens its arms to new journeys for the taking…

‘No Treasure But Hope’ will be released on November 15th via City Slang.