The Waiting Room sounds like a different band trying to rip off Tindersticks’s sound but failing at it because they aren’t Tindersticks. However, this is Tindersticks, so that’s concerning. Doubly so, because their previous album, The Something Rain, is one of the best they’ve ever done, reinvigorating their noir-pop songwriting with its longtime close cousins of chanson, sophisti-pop, and jazz.

The Waiting Room is their most typical album yet, and its melodies fail where similarly straightforward albums such as Waiting for the Moon were able to get by quite well with them alone. We’re no longer waiting for the moon, evidently—we’re waiting for nothing. And then we’re waiting for any of the thinly-spread notes of these overly minimalist compositions to come together and form a distinct emotion. Instead, we only get the superficial building blocks of Stuart Staples’s dreary voice and a very bored (that is, not overwhelmed) piano. The worst Tindersticks album. Or more specifically, their most “nothing” album.