But with their latest album and a new label, a heretofore unfamiliar sense of optimism has infected the band. And rather than digging in the dirt, the Whigs are seeking higher ground. Recorded at King’s Way, a mansion-cum-studio in New Orleans, 1965 (the band’s sixth LP) finds the foursome hitting its stride, with a little help from the Big Easy’s finest — the Royal Orleans Revue — on keyboards and horns.

The sultry swank of “Crazy” opens with the clink of glasses in a bar and the kind of cackling and background noise that provide the soundtrack in favorite watering holes everywhere. Swapping his patented sneer for something that smacks of sincerity, singer Dulli croons over toned-down guitars, with Alex Chilton of Big Star and Box Tops fame sidling his smooth backing vocals underneath. Dulli’s at his seductive best with the sassy come-on of “66,” with a hip-hop handclap opening that gives way to the singer’s alternately demanding/ pleading/ mournful vocals as he tries to convince the woman at the other end of the bar to go home with him. Although in the past Dulli’s often been the guy with the no-good gleam in his eye, “66″ is playful and flirtatious, rather than desperate and cynical.

On past Whigs records, the sound of a match being struck that opens 1965 most likely would have been lit by a private investigator sparking a torch at a crime scene. Combining a love for all things sinister with guitar-rock and ’70s soul has always been the Afghan Whigs’ bag, but this time the sulphurous strike at the start of “Somethin’ Hot” is most likely intended to light the candles that will flicker over a cozy dinner for two.

Stripping away the piercing guitar sounds that still creep up in songs such as “The Slide Song,” Dulli slinks to the mic for the straight soul of “Neglekted” and “Omerta” (the bassline of which recalls an early Whigs cover of the Supremes song “My World Is Empty Without You”). Here Dulli coaxes and cajoles in a silky tone that would have made band hero Marvin Gaye proud.

As though they were recording in a vacuum and not in a mansion, the Afghan Whigs have turned a blind eye to the disposable music dominating the Top 40 and come up with an album of wonderfully anachronistic songs. By plumbing the depths of their influences, they have managed to dig their way out of the hollow, and to find themselves on top once again.

On 1965, the Afghan Whigs continue down the back alley they found on 1996′s Black Love. Dulli creates for himself an urban world of long shadows and cracked sidewalks, then pronounces himself King. And while, as far as kings go, Dulli makes for more of a party- animal than a British oppressor, he always gets his girl at the end of the day.

“I got your phone number, baby/ I’ll call you some time/ I think I might go out tonight/ Maybe give you a ride” is how Dulli opens “Something Hot” amid raspy guitar riffs, a roadhouse piano and backup singers. It’s overproduced and cliche, but you take notes anyway, ’cause– let’s face it– the guy’s been around. “Neglekted” sounds like sex from pickup (“I knew a girl, extraordinary/ Suggested something, unsanitary”) to post- coital cigarette, and “Crazy” sounds like a house party after everyone except your closest, drunkest friends have left.

And finally, “Citi Soleil” plays like the song the Afghan Whigs have always been looking for: Dulli’s “Ooh child, I’ll meet you child/ On the sunny side, it’s alright, it’s alright” chorus rises up from his gut as Rick McCollum sits on the feedback pedal– but only after John Curley picks out a gentile French melody on acoustic guitar. It’s good and bad, black and white, inner city and continental all rolled into one hogleg of a song. It gives you the feeling that 1965 was a pretty good year, if it’s anything like the Afghan Whigs paint it.

-Shan Fowler