Few people in my group of friends have ever seen me rock out to The Afghan Whigs great, boldly overproduced and flagrantly, wonderfully over-the-top 1998 album 1965, and that is by design. Everyone has limits, and I do not want to push my friends any further than I already do. It is still a little bit strange to me that The Afghan Whigs could represent this push, but it is so, and I’ve dealt with that. There are a great deal of bold guitar statements in Afghan Whigs songs, and I am willing to understand that such an amount may be more than some people wish to deal with. I have had girlfriends compare the songs on 1965 to the Goo Goo Dolls, and it has hurt me. The poor girl didn’t know that Greg Dulli’s strutting and emoting and hyper-rock-star posturing is brilliant; in her folly, she probably just thought he was a coked-up jerk with a solo jones and weak self-editing skills. Many people might think this, actually. O poor unfortunate multitude.
Or poor me. Guilty pleasures don’t really come a lot guiltier than late-period Afghan Whigs. They were grandiose in the early-90s during their Sub Pop years, but things really went to shit – brilliantly went to shit, mind you – when Dulli and Co. wound up on Columbia in the late ‘90s. Really, really big sunglasses, substance use I get dizzy even speculating about, and songs with titles like “The Vampire Lanois” and “Honky’s Ladder” quickly followed. But after the Whigs broke up after 1965, Dulli truly took off into the stratosphere. Under the 100% genius name of Twilight Singers, Dulli released two very good and very different solo records: Twilight As Played By Twilight Singers – a porny electronic-tinged collaboration with Fila Brasilia – came out in 2000, and last year’s Blackberry Belle is another steamy piece of awesomely overseasoned Dulli bombast. The latter is a far better record than the former – it’s probably a more consistent record than most late Whigs, and has some really great, dark, musically smart songs on it – but both are idiosyncratic, unselfconscious and undeniably well crafted. I love both these records, in secret and despite myself. I can’t say the same about She Loves You, the new Twilight Singers covers record.
Which surprises me, honestly. Covers – usually sleazed-up takes on Marvin Gaye or Prince or the occasional standard – were staples of Whig live shows, and Dulli is an enthusiastic and broad-minded interpreter. The more ostentatiously sexed-up Dulli and the Whigs became – and by the time Dulli reached Twilight, he was basically making make-out music too dirty to make out to – the more appealing the prospect of their inevitable covers record became. Then came this short long-player with probably the sleaziest cover since Wild Cherry stopped recording. Finally, right? Yeah, I know, but it’s not quite all that, and for reasons I never expected to cite: Dulli’s tendency towards wild-eyed lushness finally, at points here, starts to smell a little overripe.
Several songs on She Loves You deliver on the promise this record held for me and whoever else actually cares about this dude. “Feeling of Gaze” takes a Mazzy Star song and, almost inevitably, whips it into better shape with a nicely spacious production approach and a strong, emotive Dulli vocal. “What Makes You Think You’re The One” is a Fleetwood Mac cover, and has all the candy-coated gloss you’d expect, right down to the “do do do do’s,” bombastic drums and gorgeous Lindsey Buckinghammy riffage (courtesy of Jon Skibic and Dulli). Dulli puts a new edge on Bjork’s “Hyperballad,” replacing that song’s icy electronic trills with pulsing drums and handclaps and a nicely idiosyncratic vocal. They’re all good songs, and they all pale in comparison to the record’s best bad song: a supremely sleazy suite-style combination of John Coltrane’s “Love Supreme” with Marvin Gaye’s “Please Stay.” It’s so nasty you’ll want to slap yourself in the face just for playing it, but it’s also so irresistibly filthy that I smile thinking about it.
But, as I said, everyone has limits. Mine, Dulli-wise, are far to the left of most other people, but they exist. And his brainless, thudding cover of the bruising Billie Holliday anti-lynching dirge “Strange Fruit” is pretty far beyond it. The idea of covering Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love” is great, and perfectly Dulli – this is a guy who has unabashedly referenced Nas in songs about buying drugs from snotty rave kids – but the execution is unremarkable. It’s hard to say why some of these songs hit and others don’t: I certainly like Skip James’ “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” and George Gershwin’s “Summertime” more than I dig Mazzy Star, but both come out flat and comparatively lifeless.
Greg Dulli’s praiseworthy dimensions and his less-praiseworthy ones are uncomfortably close to one another. It’s one of the things I like about him. And it’s hard to complain when someone whose work you love for its unashamed ridiculousness crosses the bar into too-ridiculous. So I won’t complain about it, except to say that She Loves You isn’t the Twilight Singers’ best work, despite a few undeniable high points. Of course, you didn’t hear this from me. Me, I don’t even listen to them. |