On leave from the Afghan Whigs, Greg Dulli gets down with The Twilight Singers.

by M.J. Fine

Citypaper.net

The first thing you notice about Twilight As Played By The Twilight Singers (out this week on Columbia), the new album from Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli, is the beats. Sure, it begins with piano as twinkly as anything on the Whigs’ Black Love; the midsection could be aggressive foreplay to Gentlemen’s main act; and it’s laced with the same Catholic guilt that pervades Congregation. But it’s those beats that give Twilight its identity, and it’s those beats that make it a tougher listen than anything in the Afghan Whigs’ catalog.

A side project in every sense, Greg Dulli’s Twilight Singers started as a bedroom-tapes session during a 1997 breather from his day job with the Whigs. “I’d been in a band for over 10 years, and I think I wanted to have a musical affair with other people,” Dulli says in a telephone interview. During a time he characterizes as “bleak,” saddled with the side effects of buying into his own persona as an affable asshole, Dulli brought in collaborators Harold Chichester and Shawn Smith, whose minimal roles belie the group’s decidedly plural name. Coming out of the darkness amid the Whigs’ flight from Elektra to Columbia, Dulli shelved the Twilight Singers project for a couple years while recording and promoting the Whigs’ celebratory 1965. By the time he was ready to work on it again, demos had been leaked and were circulating among fans and critics. “The bootlegging was troubling,” Dulli says. “If something goes out unfinished, you sort of feel violated.”

That’s where those beats come in.

“It led me to Fila.”

Determined to finish his sketches, he took the tracks to Fila Brazillia. The British duo gave Twilight its atmosphere, and its beats. “I sort of had the beats in mind all along, but it was when I hooked up with Fila in England… I knew they’d be most sympathetic to my cause,” Dulli says. “I can honestly say that I considered the beats three years ago, but I didn’t have the technical know-how to do it, so I needed to get with some people who do that for a living.”

Once you get past its distractions, Twilight gives its share of pleasure. For Dulli, one of the benefits of moving away from rock was that it puts less of a strain on his voice. “I can sing in a register that’s more like my speaking voice. That’s a wall of guitars you gotta sing over in the Whigs,” he says. “If it doesn’t start out screaming, you soon get there. And that’s great, and I love that, but with Twilight stuff, it was more focused on actually singing.” That accounts for the album’s R&B frame: “It’s always in my back pocket,” Dulli says of the 1960s and ’70s sound that he keeps coming back to. “I know enough about it that I can whip it out and put my own spin on it.”

The album’s “King Only” and “Clyde” work on several levels, and “Love” suffers only if you’re already smitten with the stripped-down incarnation that appears in Monument Ave., one of Dulli’s flirtations with film. “That’s Just How That Bird Sings,” with Dulli, Smith and Chichester sharing lead vocals, hints at how a collaboration of equals might have turned out. As a come-on, “Verti-Marte” probably serves its purpose: seducing the woman whose voice is sampled. For the rest of us, it’s more like five minutes of downtime to recharge and reach for a fresh condom between the slow-grinding “Annie Mae” and guilt-defying “Last Temptation,” inspired by The Last Temptation of Christ.

“I was really moved by the [Nikos] Kazantzakis book because he humanized the folk hero,” says Dulli, himself a lapsed altar boy. “He was like, ‘Wow, Jesus wants to get laid, too!’”

Weary from the lengthy 1965 tour which brought the Whigs to the TLA twice, Dulli plans a much shorter trek to promote Twilight. “The thought of going out and touring for six or eight months — I won’t do it,” he says. Nonetheless, Dulli and Chichester plan to play Philly in the fall. (Smith’s not in the touring band.)

In addition to Twilight songs and new material, Dulli promises some surprises. “I’m a big fan of the cover song. I’ve worked up a couple doozies,” he says. You have to expect anything from Dulli, a guy who’s brought his own thing to Hole’s “Miss World,” South Park’s “Uncle Fucka,” TLC’s “Creep” and Jesus Christ Superstar’s “Gethsemane.”

Work continues in Cincinnati on the next Afghan Whigs album, and Dulli says he intends to work with Fila Brazillia in December on more Twilight Singers stuff. So far, he’s worked up about 10 new songs, but hasn’t committed them to either outlet. “Writing songs for myself is something that I haven’t done since I was a teenager. I’m getting back in touch with my inner teenager,” says the guy with a bottomless id. “If they please me, I’ll decide which vehicle they ride in.”