Although remours of its’ pedigree persist, this writer never got around to checking out STUART A. STAPLES debut solo album “Lucky Dog Recordings ’03-‘04”: a self-explanatory enough title bearing in mind these songs were ones Stuart laid down at his home studio during the period during and after the release of the Tindersticks’ currently-last album “Waiting For The Moon”.
Whether or not this extending hiatus means the ‘Sticks have actually called time or not is a question that doesn’t appear to have been answered (if it was I didn’t hear about it), but even if they have it seems that at least three of them are going to be gainfully employed with their distinguished leader as he embarks on a fine solo journey.
So in the real sense, “Leaving Songs” is Stuart’s debut album ‘proper’ in that it was laid down in Nashville at Mark Nevers’ studio with fellow Tindersticks Dave Boulter (keyboards), Neil Fraser (guitars) and brass alumnus Terry Edwards in close attendance and further vocal support provided by on-off ‘Sticks’ collaborators Gina Foster and Lhasa De Sela who previously turned up on “Waiting For The Moon.”
French-Canadian De Sela was present on Staples’ magnificent recent single “That Leaving Feeling” – arguably his finest duet since “Travelling Light” with Carla Torgerson back on “Tindersticks Second Album” – but as it turns out Stu has several further Hazelwood’n’Sinatra moments in store for us here. “There Is A Path” finds a quavery Staples shadowed beautifully by Foster’s second vocal and struggling not to give into Lady Temptation (“They get that look in their eye that says ‘let’s go too far’/ and I know it’s time to find my car”); the excellent wanderer’s ballad “This Road Is Long” features Lone Justice’s Maria McKee giving Stuart as good as she gets and the Southern Soul-etched “One More Time” again couples Staples with Gina Foster and finds the couple stumbling through the drink-soused remains of what could have been. Aided and abetted by the most lugubrious use of a clavinet ever.
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Elsewhere, Staples gets creepy and obsessive on songs like the very Tindersticks-y “Goodbye To Old Friends” – a truly dark night of the soul propped up by Edwards’ stabs of Mariachi brass – and “Which Way Is The Wind” which lurches forward with skittery drumming, skirls of orchestration and some niggly guitar from Fraser. Unlike the Tindertsicks’ perverse attempts to play rock’n’roll of sorts with tunes like the ironic “Fast One”, there are no attempts at dumb rockers, but instead Stuart weirds us out with sparse minimalism like the virtually a capella “Dance With An Old Man” or allows some splashes of finest Americana to mix with his whiskey sour on the enigmatic “Already Gone” where Boulter’s Blackpool pier organ acts as a fine, jarring counterpart.
Of course – aside from a few discreet country textures – there’s precious little new ground broken by this album, but then what did you realistically expect? Where Stuart Staples’ muse is concerned, he’s always at his mostly deadly at around 3AM when all the wine bottles have been drained, the ashtrays are overflowing and she’s scrawled a goodbye message in lipstick on the cracked bathroom mirror. “Leaving Songs” is basically more of the same and as usual it’s a gem. Whoever came up with the old adage about not fixing what ain’t broke was making a damn good point, you know.
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