But this is no mere student vs. master relationship, no suggestion that Dulli is a lesser artist for having seen a template (one that others before Ferry helped craft) and seized it, for we know that Dulli strives to create only the best records he can.

On She Loves You Dulli finds himself among good company with material from Gershwin (“Summertime,” here performed in the spirit of peak-era psychedelic with touches of high theatre), Bjork (“Hyperballad,” dressed in Heroes-era Bowie clothes) and John Coltrane (“A Love Supreme”). It probably also helps to have Mark Lanegan on hand for vocals, but Dulli’s never seemed a man who needed help. Rather, he seems to take it anyway and make the most of it. And that he can always do that just fine.

One of the top five albums you can’t be caught without this year.

By Val Tsoutsouris

2.5 Stars

Some would argue that it takes a lot of courage to record a cover version of a famous song. What, you think you could do better? However, no one has ever accused Greg Dulli of lacking courage. So, perhaps it makes perfect sense that Dulli’s new band The Twilight Singers has recorded an album of all cover songs entitled She Loves You.

Dulli was never shy about remaking old Motown and soul hits part of his old band The Afghan Whigs’ repertoire. A cover of Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Babe” off of the Beautiful Girls soundtrack was particularly memorable and effective.

On She Loves You, Dulli is now showing off a greater range of influences. It’s impressive, but as Michael Bolton can attest, it’s more than a little vain, too. And Dulli has always had more than a smidgen of vanity within him.

The most audacious cut is a take on Bjork’s “Hyperballad.” Dulli shows great taste with this, Bjork’s best song, and the lyrics are right in Dulli’s wheelhouse of bad-boy, big-time sensuality. However, what makes it so great is that Bjork’s vocal performance is traded in for some faux industrial guitar throb.

The Fleetwood Mac cover, “What Makes You Think You’re the One”, makes the connection between Dulli and Lindsey Buckingham that has made sense all along. “Summertime,” though, makes a connection between Dulli and Gershwin that should perhaps never even existed.

The better moments, a take on “Hard Time Killing Floor” that fits guest vocalist Mark Lanegan’s voice like a glove, and the traditional “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” are the quieter moments.

Like all covers albums, it’s essentially inessential. But Greg Dulli’s charms can be hard to resist for so many who love his music.

Zookeeper.Stanford.edu

Blues/Soul/Jazz/R&B covers with a “TRIPPY POP” sensibility. Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs returns! Does Gershwin, Coltrane, Gaye, Mary J. Blige, and others, with his gritty, haunting voice that unarguably drips sex. One might think the album is one of new original songs. A bit louder and darker than the last album. Even if you don’t know the original songs, Dulli really makes each one his own. Soul and Indie Pop fans alike will enjoy. Dulli often does covers at live shows. Much anticipated follow-up to the The Twilight Singers 2003 debut, “Blackberry Belle.” All clean (No FCC violations).

1)* Mazzy Star cover. Opens with woman’s distorted voice. Just Greg Dulli singing with acoustic background. Slower tempo. Faint, echoing backup vocals around -0:29. Single-key piano backup to fade out around -0:19.
(2:23)
2) Martina Topley-Bird cover. Jazzier tune, heavier bass and percussion. Dulli sings with more gusto. Crescendo around -3:05, with intro of one wailing, almost squealing guitar string. Ends with same guitar. (4:02)
3)*** Bjork cover. A bit more reminiscient of the Twilight Singer’s wistful style, but no piano. Dreamy, simple bass line. -3:47 percussion gets a little stronger. Loud female backup vocals and stronger guitar, at -3:38.
Calms down again around -3:00. Backups return at -1:54. (4:56)
4) Billie Holiday cover. Slow, high piano intro. -3:18 electric guitar and rainfalling. -3:10 fuller instrumentation and Dulli singing. Growlier vocals. Visceral ballad. (3:30)
5) Fleetwood Mac cover. Tambourine and electric guitar first few seconds. Piano reminds one of bells. Joyous quality. Similar gusto to “Teenage
Wristband” from last album. (3:47)
6) Mary J. Blige cover. With John Lennon’s refrain. (4:26)
7)* Skip James cover. Think: The Blues. Including humming. (3:15) John Coltrane cover (loosely so). Manages to gets a “Ladies’ Man” feeling with rock sensibility. Transitions flawlessly into next song. (2:05)
9) Marvin Gaye cover. Nice “doo doos” at -1:26. (4:02)
10)* Nina Simone cover. Quieter break after song 9. Dulli makes his own arrangements on this one. Sings his heart out at -2:59. (4:25)
11)** “Summertime”! Haunting, pretty, uniquely Dulli. Can’t get over that voice. Echo-y acoustic, keyboards come in at -1:44. Starts fading out at -0:21. May want to stop song at -0:15 (very quiet). (3:00)

by Manish Agarwal

He’s traded red-blooded rock for late night soul, but Greg Dulli still sketches an alluring Venn diagram of love, sex, and death.

He didn’t write them, but the 11 songs here seamlessly fit the man’s doomed romantic worldview. His nicotine dusted pipes make Bjork’s wide-eyed Hyperballad taste bittersweet, while Mary J Blige’s yearning R&B hit Real Love now bleeds pedal steel and doubt. Skip James’ Hard Time Killing Floor is rendered acoustically, with sepulchral backing vocals by Mark Lanegan. But the album’s centerpiece is a mellifluous, Fender Rhodes-flavoured suite linking John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme with Marvin Gaye’s Please Don’t Stay, to tap mine-deep reserves of bruised feeling. These may be other people’s words, but Dulli well knows the vocabulary.

By Tim Den
Monday. Nov 01, 12:23 PM
Seedy, dirty, rapturously dangerous.

Greg Dulli’s The Twilight Singers’ last album, Blackberry Belle, pretty much silenced all who wished the man would reform The Afghan Whigs. It was an apparition of a record with a shadow as sun drenched as Dulli’s home of New Orleans: restless, seductive, decadent, lustful, and gorgeously dirty. It proved that not only could rock ‘n’ roll – in all of its original potency and danger – still be relevant without any trace of nostalgic/hipster retro/vintage bullshit, but that Dulli knew how to cultivate the true soul of rock – R&B – into loud chords and downbeats.

It’s not surprising then, that She Loves You – an album of covers by artists as diverse as Bjork, George Gershwin, John Coltrane, and Nina Simone – has Dulli swimming through it like fish in water. Long known for his ability to inject seedy soulfulness into covers, Dulli not so much reinterprets as transforms the songs. They become his own: haunting, celebratory, heartsick, grotesque… everything you would expect from the man. And through it all the originals’ – as well as Dulli’s – R&B spirit shines, writhing in ecstasy as it picks fights in “Too Tough to Die,” pleads in “Please Stay (Once You Go Away),” and laments in “Hard Time Killing Floor.” As the album nears its end, “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” both delivers the zenith of this collection (just listen to that howl) and cements Dulli as second to none in his power as a Rocking Soul Man.

Dulli once said that “‘she loves you’ means she doesn’t love me,” but it’s hard to think of a reason not to fall for the man. Simply irresistible.

Whatever the case, with She Loves You, Dulli brings his melancholy brain and massive balls to bear on 11 vastly re-imagined cover tunes. He transforms Hope Sandoval’s “Feeling of Gaze” into a triumphantly shimmering star in the sky, a hypnotic beacon worth following to the end of the Earth. He re-christens Topley-Bird’s “Too Tough to Die” into a dark requiem that sounds like it was pounded out on a dusty piano and drum kit left over from the Westwood film set. He drags Björk’s “Hyperballad” kicking and screaming onto the dance floor of some frightening gospel showdown. He turns Billie Holiday’s signature, “Strange Fruit,” into a dirty little secret between lovers (who might also be the murderers in question), as they admire their repulsive handiwork.

But my personal favorite is Dulli’s anthemic, gritty, guitar-jangling take on Fleetwood Mac’s “What Makes You Think You’re the One.” I hope that Lindsey Buckingham hears this version and figures out how to incorporate some of the Twilight Singers’ stark beauty into the next Mac attack.

Unlike lesser covers projects — like, say, Elvis Costello’s Kojak Variety — She Loves You lets you into the most unexpected corners of a significant artist’s imagination, where “Hard Time Killing Floor” and “A Love Supreme” make perfect sense next to each other. It’s because such dated songs are made new again in Dulli’s darkly romantic vision.

Mapping the fading muscle memories of sex (Martina Topley Bird’s “Too Tough To Die”) and the bittersweet ennui of waking up alone (Marvin Gaye’s “Please Stay”), the Twilight Singer remembers soaring pop highs (Björk’s “Hyperballad”) and acerbic rock lows (Fleetwood Mac’s “What Makes You Think”).

But the lesson learned from the blistered blues truth of ballads like Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and Skip James’ “Hard Time Killing Floor” (featuring Mark Lanegan) also elicits comfort in the soulful jazzy sigh of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”. And redemption finally comes in simply sharing one last comforting goodbye (Gershwin’s “Summertime”) with his lost lover.

by Mike Bell
Calgary Sun

Soul-mining experience

We who work in words steal.

We plunder because all there is, there has already been.

The path to a point has already been paved, with Wal-Marts, McDonald’s and Jiffy Lubes lining the sides and selling maps to points of human interest along the way.

There’s no original thought, no original idea.

Try telling someone you love them.

Try telling someone you’re sorry.

Try telling someone you hate them.

Try telling someone you want to … well, try telling someone the only thing you want is to lie next to them and hear their breathing subside, their heart calm and their skin cool before you’re awakened by the sounds of construction early the next morning.

The only way you can do it and make a difference is to mean it — mean it from the bottom of your soul. Say it, write it, sing it with a passion, an energy that makes the experience and the situation your own.

Need an example? Greg Dulli.

On She Loves You, Dulli — the best voice in rock music, period — takes the road most travelled, plucking strange fruit from the tree for 11 covers of such notable artists as Coltrane, Gaye, Gershwin, Buckingham and Bjork.

In doing so, he turns in one of the best albums of his career and one of the best albums of the year.

A soul-mining experience that seduces you — that turns down the lights and turns them out when it leaves just before dawn.

Yes, they’re the words of others, they’re cover songs.

But when he gets done with them, when Dulli’s done stroking them, having his way with them, they’re naked, brutal, beautiful — they’re uncovered.

Given this history, it should surprise no one that the third release from the Twilight Singers, Dulli’s “new” band (formed in 1997), is a record of covers. The breadth of artists Dulli tackles, however, might raise a few eyebrows. Included on She Loves You are songs written or made famous by Billie Holiday (“Strange Fruit”), Nina Simone (“Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair”); Mary J. Blige (“Real Love”); Björk (“Hyperballad”); Fleetwood Mac (“What Makes You Think You’re the One”); George Gershwin (“Summertime”); electronica/trip-hop singer Martina Topley-Bird (“Too Tough to Die”); and languid indie rocker Hope Sandoval (“Feeling of Gaze”). Oh, and John Coltrane.

Like any worthwhile artist, Dulli easily sidesteps the pitfall of juvenile imitation. Combining his swaggering growl with his penchant for eerie, sinewy guitar lines, Dulli instead brings to life what often feel more like new creations than covers. “Feeling of Gaze,” “To Tough to Die,” “Black is the Color,” “Real Love” and “What Makes You Think You’re the One” are unqualified successes, and “Strange Fruit,” about the distinctly uncomfortable topic of lynching, comes off with an admirable intensity and brutal honesty. Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and Gershwin’s “Summertime,” on the other hand, point to the limits of Dulli’s ambitious agenda; to put it plainly, he’s overreaching. A few other tunes hang somewhere in the middle, neither particularly enticing nor off-putting.

While falling a bit shy of true greatness, She Loves You is nonetheless a successful record a must-have for Dulli fans and a worthwhile excursion for fans of the artists he covers.

I never appreciated the Afghan Whigs until I moved away from Cincinnati and their incessant white-trash-soul whining, but now I miss them, and now Greg Dulli’s singing covers (Björk!?) with Mark Lanegan. It’s more romantic and less sexy than the Whigs, but there’s the nagging feeling I’ve been conned into listening to adult contemporary music. If Dulli’s looking for a love/hate relationship, he’s found it. – bryan b.