TINDERSTICKS

THIS WAY UP, 1995

Perhaps the band’s finest work, created in a tumult of inspiration in Conny Plank’s Cologne studio, and London’s Abbey Road

We somehow managed to get the support tour for the Bad Seeds at the end of ’93, and Blixa [Bargeld] said we should go to Conny Plank’s studio. So when we were passing through Cologne we went to see it and thought, ‘Yeah, this is the place. Let’s go to Conny’s for a week and see what happens.’ And the second album happened, basically. It took us by surprise. I’ve had maybe three spurts of pure songwriting [across my career], and the second album was definitely one of those. So many songs were written, and that’s the strength of the second album. Doing exactly what we wanted to do

on the first album, and it being some kind of success, gave us the confidence to keep in our own world and not worry about anything else outside of that. I think we achieved that for the first two albums, they were both made so subconsciously almost, in their own way, without any outside influence or concern about any kind of industry. Those records hold a rare freedom for me. It was a special time between the six of us, enjoying the pure fun of making music. Even though looking back a lot of the songs on the second album are about losing people close to us – they are kind of hard to write about, songs like “A Night In” – they are offset with a playfulness and enjoyment of making music. “Sleepy Song” was recorded on one mic on a really special night in Abbey Road Studio One – we tried to get Studio Two but it was booked up. The one-mic idea was very much influenced by the first Cowboy Junkies record [1985’s Whites Off Earth Now!!]. It was just something we wanted to explore, and it’s something I always want to go back to. It was an evening of moving ourselves around the mic, playing the song, going to have a listen, bringing the trumpet forward, positioning the Leslie… The whole album had that sense of discovery about it, which I think carried on into Curtains.