When the brooding British chamber-rock ensemble Tindersticks took the stage amid rapturous applause last Friday at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, it was their first New York appearance since a memorable 2003 performance with an eighteen-piece string section in Central Park in the rain. Though the band never formally announced its retirement, it went on indefinite hiatus the following year, to the great disappointment of is ardent European fan base and a smaller but equally dedicated group of followers in the United States. In 2006, however, Tindersticks reunited at London’s Barbican Theater to perform its untitled 1995 sophomore album in its entirety, an experience that spurred front man Stuart Staples, who’d been busying himself with a pair of solo records and soundtrack work, to forge ahead with the full band again. The result was last year’s The Hungry Saw, the band’s seventh album, which, despite the departure of several key founding members, felt like vintage Tindersticks: less spare and introspective than 2003′s Waiting for the Moon, it mixes lush orchestration and literate songcraft that’s both soulful and baroque, offering enough of the band’s trademark melancholy to keep the depressives happy, while also adding a little more sunshine to its crepuscular arrangements.

In Brooklyn the other night, before an audience so reverent you could hear a pin drop during silences, Tindersticks focused on the new songs; Staples stepped back from the mike for a pair of instrumentals that showcased the range and cohesiveness of the band, which featured trumpet, trombone, saxophone, cello, and keys in addition to the standard rock setup. “Yesterday’s Tomorrows” recalled the narcotized, Anglo twists on smooth soul the band explored earlier this decade and “All the Love” proved that Tindersticks can still do a harrowing ballad like no other; meanwhile, the call-and-response of “Boobar, Come Back to Me” and the countrified, uptempo “The Hungry Saw” showed the group’s more playful side. Staples dipped into the back catalog enough to keep the audience content with songs like the bleak, existential “Dying Slowly,” from 2001′s Can Our Love… and the pensive, delicate “My Oblivion,” from Waiting for the Moon. There were countless musical ghosts in the room, from Scott Walker to Lee Hazlewood, Bobby Womack to Ennio Morricone, but the songs always came back to Staples’s inimitable baritone croon, bruised and yearning—down, but not out.

Tindersticks wraps up its American tour with performances tonight in Los Angeles and on Saturday in San Francisco. Details on those shows, along with MP3s from The Hungry Saw and more, can be found here.

KEYWORDS: Music, Stuart Staples, Tindersticks