Dulli and Lanegan Return to Europe with “Stripped” Shows
“An Evening With Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan”
Goes On Sale This Friday November 14th
Sub Pop veterans Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan will return to Europe beginning January 15th 2009 for sixteen special intimate performances. Dulli and Lanegan along with guitarist Dave Rosser will perform a ‘Stripped Down In The Gutter’ set. By sheer virtue of the intimacy of the show, it will be unique, as neither Dulli nor Lanegan have toured in this capacity before.
“Since our instrumentation for this tour is going to be radically different, the shows will include many songs neither of us have performed in quite sometime or ever,” Dulli commented.
“An Evening With Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan” will kick off on January 15th in Glasgow at the Oran Mor and will run through February 2nd in Athens, Greece at Gagarin 205. Tickets will go on sale this Friday (November 14th) for all sixteen shows.
The Gutter Twins have had a massively successful year with the release of their debut album Saturnalia, and their follow up EP Adorata for Sub Pop Records. It’s been a welcome homecoming to Sub Pop for both artists.
Mark Lanegan rose to fame as singer for the much-loved Seattle band Screaming Trees and Greg Dulli as the magnetic leader of the Afghan Whigs. Following the break up of both groups, Lanegan and Dulli went on to achieve significant notice on their own. Lanegan continued to release successful solo albums, as well as create vivid partnerships with the likes of Belle & Sebastian singer Isobel Campbell and Queens of the Stone Age. Dulli, meanwhile, innovatively fused indie, soul and electronic sounds in his post-Whigs ensemble the Twilight Singers, who released their first album, Twilight As Played By The Twilight Singers, in 2000; the most recent Twilight effort, 2006’s Powder Burns. Saturnalia is sure to make many ‘Best Of 2008′ lists.
Following the conclusion of this tour, Dulli will begin work on a new Twilight Singers album; while Mark Lanegan has an upcoming project with Soulsavers and will begin work on his first solo album in five years.
‘AN EVENING WITH GREG DULLI & MARK LANEGAN’
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 TOUR DATES
1/15 UK Glasgow Oran Mor
1/16 IRELAND Dublin Academy
1/17 IRELAND Galway Roisin Dubh
1/19 UK London Union Chapel
1/20 BELGIUM Hasselt Muziekodroom
1/21 BELGIUM Brussels Ancienne Belgique
1/22 HOLLAND Haarlem Patronaat
1/24 GERMANY Berlin Babylon
1/25 AUSTRIA Vienna WuK
1/26 ITALY Milan La Salumeria Della Musica
1/27 ITALY Rome Auditorium Parco Della Musica
1/28 ITALY Florence Auditorium Flog
1/30 SPAIN Barcelona Apolo
1/31 SPAIN Bilbao Kafe Antzokia
2/2 SPAIN Madrid Joy Eslava
2/4 GREECE Athens Gagarin 205
Saturnalia on Amazon Music’s Best of 2008
The Gutter Twins’ Saturnalia comes in at number 84 on Amazon.com’s Best of 2008 list.
thx burton
The Gutter Twins Darken Brooklyn for a Night
Twins in the Lemmon and Matthau sense, The Gutter Twins are longtime buddies Mark Lanegan (of Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age fame) and Greg Dulli (of Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers). ‘90s rock fans will eat this stuff up: an indie act with purebred Seattle grunge pedigree and an unlikely pairing that works because it operates in stark contrasts, rocking out with hard-hitting fuzz one moment, hushing down to ethereal shimmer the next.
Lanegan possesses the voice of God, if God chain smoked and had a penchant for single malts, and his gravelly, rumbling baritone—capable of dipping so low you can feel it in your chest—is The Gutter Twins’ single best asset. But Dulli’s melancholic, chameleon-like vocals complicate the texture, frequently layering over his partner’s voice in thick harmony. This complex sound—like a slab of dangerously black marble with a beautiful sheen—is what transforms this band’s otherwise pretty generic grunge rock songs into something special.
Their Thursday show at Greenpoint’s Warsaw mostly showcased the band’s darker side, roaring out the gates with the crunchy triple-guitar attack of their debut album Saturnalia and rarely letting up until some light piano balladry toward the end. Songs from previous lives, including updated cuts from Screaming Trees, The Twilight Singers and Lanegan’s prolific solo career, mixed well with the Twins’ bluesy, mid-paced, minor-key anthems of failed love, loneliness and desperation.
The many fans packed into Warsaw’s small theater seemed not to mind the sameness that sometimes crept into the long set, jumping and flailing limbs with each heavy groove, egged on by Dulli’s sarcastic bravado and Lanegan’s quiet brooding. The Twins are all about atmosphere, and their music approaches a gothic bleakness that seems more profound than their lyrics of longing and lost loves suggest. That inky, irresistible blackness, as they sang in unison during a cut from their recent Adorata EP, “comes creeping, comes swallowing everything in its wake.”
Gutter Twins on “Life”
“I Was in Love with You” and “God’s Children” by the Gutter Twins were featured on this week’s episode of “Life” on NBC (Episode 2.07). A few weeks ago, Donal Logue’s character (Captain Tidwell) also gave a nod to the Afghan Whigs (Episode 2.04).
Thanks to everyone that sent this in.
The Gutter Twins darken the TLA tonight
The Delaware County Daily Times
By Michael Christopher, Times Music Columnist
The teaming of Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan is a music lover’s dream: Two alternative rock icons, both with a twisted and dark psyche, getting together to see what trouble they can get into.
Initially, it was to dabble in each other’s projects — a guest spot here, a backing vocal there. But earlier this year, the two banded together for a full length under the oh-so-appropriate moniker The Gutter Twins.
The result, “Saturnalia,” is a bleak and twisted affair that makes some of the work by Edgar Allan Poe seem like cheery, sunny day material. Barreling through songs of tortured love, impending doom and fire and brimstone swirl within the dark brood of Lanegan’s growl and Dulli’s painful pleas for salvation from certain damnation.
Well received by critics and fans of the singer’s respective outfits, Dulli, for one, is not surprised at the praise the album garnered out of the gate.
“I think that’s why we signed with Sub Pop,” he told Rock Music Menu. “Because they are a machine, and I knew that they would attack with tenacity.”
Sub Pop, of course, is the Seattle-based record label often credited with launching the grunge-era of the early ’90s, showcasing the likes of Nirvana and Soundgarden. It was also the first home to Dulli’s Afghan Whigs and Lanegan’s Screaming Trees.
“I think it’s very poetic,” Dulli said of returning to the Sub Pop fold. “They were the first people to believe in me, and the fact that they believe in me 20 years later? It’s a beautiful feeling.”
Linking up with a fellow singer who also approaches matters of the heart with suspicion if not outright distrust seemed only natural to Dulli, who also helms the Twilight Singers, a soulful outlet that features a revolving door of collaborators.
“He’s like one of my best friends that I’ve ever had, and he’s got one of the greatest voices that I’ve ever heard.” Dulli said. “I’ve loved that guy’s voice since I was, you know, 19 years old. It’s a thrill every night. We’ve done over 150 gigs together and it never gets old, I’m never not psyched to look over and see him standing there.”
The stoic and cool Lanegan has shared the spotlight with Dulli often in recent years, mainly to do a handful of songs on the road with The Twilight Singers before slipping away almost unnoticed until it was time to return for more. This time around, both pull their own weight for the entire show.
“We have designed the set so that no one leaves the stage —- ever,” Dulli said. “When he came out with the Twilights, I just wanted him around, and he was keen for a road trip, and it was understood whose show it was.”
“This thing here is a straight up and down 50/50 composition, and honestly, I think it’s easier on us both vocally. I would’ve lost my voice by now and I have not, so it’s nice.”
Tonight at the TLA, the duo will welcome Philadelphia into the shadows for the first time, after skipping the city on the first leg of the tour in the spring and then canceling a portion of summer dates due to scheduling conflicts.
“It was not purposeful,” said Dulli of the slight. “The night we would have played Philadelphia was the night we played The David Letterman Show, and that was the casualty. Believe me, Philadelphia and Detroit, of all the towns, they’re my two favorite towns we didn’t play that round.”
In addition to “Saturnalia,” the band is promoting an EP that came out in September called “Adorata,” which consists mainly of covers.
From the recent Jose Gonzalez single “Down the Line” to an excellent take on “Deep Hit of Morning Sun” by Primal Scream, it’s no surprise to anyone familiar with Dulli that he absolutely nails other artists’ songs, sometimes better than the original.
Last year, he flew under the radar with a cover of the Lieber and Stoller classic “Trouble,” made famous by Elvis Presley, which appeared in the Hilary Swank film “P.S. I Love You.”
“Richard LaGravenese, who is the director, is a friend of mine, and I sang an Elvis song at a party, at a piano one night, and he was at that party,” Dulli said. “I’m guessing that he noticed my Elvis skills that evening and came back at me for that one, and filled my pockets with money.”
But even as an elder statesman of such an influential era in music, Dulli still has sharp teeth that will be bared, at least into a sneer, when proper respect to his legacy isn’t shown.
Parker Gispert, singer of the rocking Athens trio The Whigs, responded to a question posed by Harp magazine earlier this year about his act’s name in relation to The Afghan Whigs.
“With all due respect, I don’t feel like it’s naming the band ‘The Stones,’” he said.
“I think that’s funny, and it must suck to be on the defensive is all I can say,” Dulli responded. “I’ll tell you what man, maybe my next band will be called The Stones.
“You know what? Albatross around your neck Whigs – have fun with that.”
The Gutter Twins tour wraps Sunday in Boston, but Dulli is already onto something else; last week he put out his first proper solo record, a live gig taken from a show one year ago in Seattle where he was joined on-stage by friends like Shawn Smith and Petra Hayden.
Right now Dulli is getting excited about some new music in the initial stages. But whether it will turn into another Twilight Singers album or something completely different hasn’t been figured out just yet.
“I’m always thinking about stuff,” he said. “I have begun to lay down riffs for something, I don’t know what it is yet, but I have some riffs that I really like. I don’t know what it will be, but they’re good.”
“It’ll be good for my new band The Stones.”
Gutter Twins Wrap Up Saturnalia Tour
The Gutter Twins will be performing their final dates in support of Saturnalia starting tomorrow night in Philadelphia. This is your last chance - make it count.
11/5 - Theater of Living Arts Philadelphia PA
11/6 - Warsaw Brooklyn NY
11/7 - Black Cat Washington DC
11/9 - Paradise Boston MA
Twin Peaks
by Jeffrey Barg
Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan rise from the ashes of the ’90s.
Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan are survivors. Few heavy alt–rock bands emerged standing after the ’90s—the Afghan Whigs and Screaming Trees included. But Dulli and Lanegan, those bands’ respective erstwhile frontmen, have combined forces in the Gutter Twins to salvage the loud guitars and melodic songwriting, while mixing in the doom and gloom of eight years’ worth of the Bush presidency.
”It’s a bit slower, a bit more theatrical, more cabaret–esque” than an Afghan Whigs show, says Dulli on the phone from New Orleans, his home and city of muse. ”It’s different enough”—both from the Whigs and from the Twilight Singers, Dulli’s other major post–Whigs project—”to deserve its own name and its own place in the canon.”
Screaming Trees, with their Washington state pedigree and prominence on the Singles soundtrack, were always equated with the era’s hallmark grunge and melancholy. The Afghan Whigs, meanwhile, seemed a little more dangerous, with Dulli’s songwriting taking on a more overt sexuality. It was driving guitars run through a filter of L.A. seediness and New Orleans gumbo, then painted over with a brush of old R&B. It was hot.
In the years since, the two’s respective solo projects—Dulli with the dark and brooding Twilight Singers, Lanegan with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Belle and Sebastian’s Isobel Campbell—paved the way to this year’s Saturnalia, the Gutter Twins’ macabre debut, and its mostly covers follow–up Adorata. The pair have been described as a satanic Everly Brothers.
”He’s got that voice,” Dulli says of Lanegan’s unmistakable rumbling baritone. ”I just think he’s one of the best singers I’ve ever heard. To me, he’s like Sinatra. Mark Lanegan doesn’t sing harmonies; he sings Lanegan.”
Though Dulli is the obvious magnetic force at the front of any Twilight Singers or Afghan Whigs show, in the Gutter Twins he largely cedes that role to Lanegan. ”He only has an A game, so you have to have an A game too,” Dulli says. ”I’m sure Josh Homme and Isobel Campbell would tell you the same thing.”
Onstage, ”I really don’t mind subsuming my enormous personality to fit the context,” Dulli adds, mostly joking.
Saturnalia, long in gestation before finally being released earlier this year, sounds little like previous projects of either Dulli or Lanegan—more discordant and symphonic than Lanegan’s previous work, and more chaotic and about–to–run–off–the–rails than Dulli’s. Late summer’s eight–track follow–up Adorata, with only two original Gutter Twins tunes, finds the duo even tighter, from their dark rendition of the traditional ”St. James Infirmary” to a blistering cover of José González’s ”Down the Line”—one of the Twins’ few all–out rockers. When they shout, ”Don’t let the darkness eat you up,” you get the sense that it’s already too late.
The music has a cinematic quality that’s landed Dulli’s work some prominent placement in Denis Leary’s scary–good FX drama Rescue Me—which in turn means new fans have found their way to Dulli and the Gutter Twins.
”They opened an episode where a bunch of children died in a fire, and they played the whole song ’The Lure Would Prove Too Much,’” an older outtake. ”It’s a long song and it takes a while to unfold, and they played the whole song. I’ve never seen that in modern television—old television either. It was pretty ballsy. And when I watched it, it just took my breath away.”
He isn’t the only one. ”The Lure” is the Twilight Singers’ second–most downloaded song on iTunes.
”I get much more out of television than I do out of films,” says Dulli, an avowed fan of The Wire, Rescue Me, Lost and, above all, Adult Swim’s Frisky Dingo.
”Frisky Dingo is the greatest show on television,” Dulli says of the ongoing animated superbattle between Killface and Awesome X. ”I define my life like this now: pre–Frisky Dingo and post–Frisky Dingo. Post– is much, much better. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”
This TLA show will be one of the last of the year for the Gutter Twins. Dulli is building a studio at his other home in Los Angeles, and plans to spend 2009 working on the next Twilight Singers record there—something he says he can’t do well while on tour.
”I’ve been playing music a lot lately just for my own enjoyment,” he says. ”We did some 90 shows last year, and honestly, people who say they write songs on the road—they must be 22.”
So it’s not exactly the ’90s anymore, is it?
”I’m more prolific now,” says Dulli. ”I was kind of lazy when I was younger. I was always off to the party. Now, after the show, the young guys all go out to a bar, and me and Lanegan go on the bus and watch sports.”
The Gutter Twins
Wed., Nov. 5, 8pm. $18. With Afterhours. TLA, 334 South St. 215.922.1011. www.livenation.com
Gonzalez on Gutter Twins
From Jose Gonzalez’s interview with New York Magazine
The Gutter Twins just released a cover of “Down the Line.” What did you think of it?
I love it. I thought it was great, and I got to meet them in Canada at a festival, and they were really nice. I got to see them live and Greg Dulli was telling me, “Yeah, it is about time someone else covered one of your songs.” There have been a couple of other artists that have done it before, but I guess the Gutter Twins are the most well known. It’s very cool.
Tel Aviv Setlists
The Gutter Twins just concluded two nights in Tel Aviv, Israel. The setlists showcase the diverse nature of the band’s current repertoire. If you were looking for a reason see the band live when they return to the states, look no further.
As a side note, I’ve had “Flow Like a River” stuck in my head for days. What a great song.
Night One 9/3
The Stations
God’s Children
Bonnie Brae
Idle Hands
Seven Stories
Change Has Come
Hard Time Killing Floor
Bete Noire
I Was In Love W/You
Down The Line
St. James Infirmary
Belles
Each to Each
Front Street
____________
Live With Me
Feathers
Hit The City
King Only
Meth Blues
Number Nine
Night Two 9/4
Idle Hands
Seven Stories
God’s Children
Deep Hit
Circle the Fringes
Hard Time Killing Floor
Bete Noire
Flow Like A River
We Two Parted
The Stations
Spanish Doors
Each to Each
Front Street
__________
Papillon
River Rise
I’m Ready
Wedding Dress
Bonnie Brae
No Easy Action
Number Nine
Adorata - Pitchfork
Pitchforkmedia.com
Score: 5.3
Over the course of his career, whether in the Afghan Whigs or Twilight Singers, Greg Dulli has covered acts as diverse as the Supremes, TLC, Fleetwood Mac, Björk, and John Coltrane with often striking results. At the very least, such earnest, even revelatory stunts revealed a craftsman’s grasp of context, the notion that even the tried and true can be taken in a new direction by a different voice. Indeed, Dulli’s honed his personality as the premier alpha letch to such perfection that he’s able to twist whatever material he’s singing to suit his needs. Were his schedule lax enough to allow such an indulgence, he’d make one hell of a wedding singer.
Given Dulli’s track record, it’s no shock that the Gutter Twins would get around to recording some covers of their own. At the least, Dulli and partner/complement Mark Lanegan have just a single album’s worth of material to their collective name, so an eight-song EP of mostly cover tracks (plus a couple of previously unreleased originals) injects some new blood into a project. Another impetus for Adorata was the passing of Eleven/Queens of the Stone Age singer/organist Natasha Shneider, who died of cancer earlier this year. Portions of the EP’s proceeds will go to her memorial fund.
Frankly, getting Shneider’s name out there, not to mention covering Eleven’s “Flow Like a River”, could make more of an impact than whatever money is raised by the internet-only sales of this solid EP. “Flow Like a River”, from Eleven’s 2003 disc Howling Book, is a perfect fit for the Gutter Twins, who don’t reinvent the song so much as give it a little kick. The same could be said of some of the other cover choices on Adorata– Vetiver’s “Belles”, for example, is pushed slightly out of psych-folk mode, but the version here sticks pretty close to the spirit of the original.
Swedish songwriter José Gonzáles, however, gets the full treatment with his “Down the Line”, which is given a set of cojones courtesy tough drums and some pounding piano, transforming this track into a veritable anthem. Elsewhere Primal Scream’s “Deep Hit of Morning Sun” is given a funky facelift that streamlines the hallucinogenic cyber-punk “Venus in Furs”-isms of the original to suit Dulli and Lanegan’s collective M.O.
The traditional “St. James Infirmary”, which Lanegan recently recorded with Isobel Campbell, is reprised here, with Dulli as duet partner and Lanegan’s baritone once again perfect for the mournful blues of this death ballad. He’s great on Scott Walker’s “Duchess”, too, another track that the Gutter Twins leave largely alone, wisely recognizing it as a song you don’t mess around with. While no one would ever accuse the enigmatic Walker of excessive sunniness, there’s an airiness and openness to this reading at refreshing odds with the Twins’ more typical claustrophobic sound.
Which brings us to the band’s new tracks, which should surprise no one by reverting back to the expected darkness and intensity. It’s called playing to your strengths, which the slow-burn “Spanish Doors” and the particularly Whigs-y “We Have Met Before” (both led by Lanegan) do well. Or well enough, since flipped on their head those same strengths could be seen as limiting weaknesses. Certainly no one expects smiley face music from these guys, but it’d be nice to know such a side exists in more than just fleeting glimpses. As the pair gets more and more comfortable with the idea of being a band rather than a one-off, maybe we’ll start to get more of the risks this EP only hints at. Until then, Adorata simply keeps the fire stoked and the scent of brimstone swirling as the group’s smoke-obscured future comes into focus.
- Joshua Klein, September 4, 2008
The Gutter Twins: Adorata The iTunes-exclusive EP of covers and two original songs from The Gutter Twins
Gentlemen The new book on the classic Afghan Whigs album written by Bob Gendron on the 33 1/3 imprint
Order Book at Amazon.com
The Gutter Twins: Saturnalia The long awaited debut from Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan
Order CD at Amazon.com
