Summer's Kiss » press-reviews-twilight

Powder Burns – Static Multimedia

Lee — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:54:28 +0000

Static Multimedia – Twilight Singers – Powder Burns
3.5/4 Stars

Greg Dulli has always been upfront about his heroin addiction, but the latest Twilight Singers album may as well be called “Traffic,” for it is at heart a concept album about the powder (hence the title). The liner notes are arrayed with maps that appear to trace the path of drugs from South America to Dulli, detailing Peru, New Orleans (where much of Powder Burns was, um, “shot on location”), and Los Angeles (including the famed junkie haven MacArthur Park).

The idea that an album can function as a film has been central to Dulli’s aesthetic since the early days of the Afghan Whigs. Strapping on a guitar for the first time in years, Dulli goes all-out to ensure that Powder Burns is a three-dimensional account of addiction in all its forms. If Dulli’s personal demons are not well and truly exorcised, I’ll be surprised. Crashing drums at the start of “I’m Ready” serve as a call to arms. The “assorted jones” of “There’s Been an Accident” give way to the slow-building agony of “Bonnie Brae,” which picks up where the Whigs’ classic junkie tale “Fountain and Fairfax” left off.

This song proves that when Dulli doesn’t raise his voice, the tension in his songs becomes palpable. When he hits his upper register, the songs sound kinda samey, and his lyrics on paper look kinda cheesy, but the menacing middle ground, with the air of a conversation about to go horribly wrong, is where it’s at. Elsewhere, the album’s less awesome moments are saved by effects-laden cameos from Joseph Arthur and backing vocals from Ani DiFranco, among others. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, Powder Burns is so convincing in its depiction of addiction that I feel I need to take a shower and check myself into rehab.

Twilight – Neumu

Lee — Tue, 13 Nov 2001 19:40:57 +0000

7/10
Neumu
by Johnny Walker (Black)

One might theorize that Afghan Whigs leader Greg Dulli scared himself when he came up with his masterpiece, the searing Gentlemen, way back in 1993. Since that exhilarating and brutally honest examination of gender relations and the perversity of the male psyche, Dulli and the Whigs have produced consistently excellent work, though nothing to top that high-water mark (perhaps, to be fair, nothing could). Meanwhile the singer-songwriter himself has gone from one trauma to the next: depression, stomach ailments and drug problems a la Kurt Cobain, injuries sustained from barroom altercations, and so on. On this side project, however, Dulli, expertly aided by Whigs alumnus and Howlin’ Maggie frontman Harold Chichester, finally stops raging against the darkness and makes his peace with it instead. Eschewing the more raucous, cathartic moments typical of the Whigs, Twilight as played by The Twilight Singers is all about atmosphere, laden with nocturnally jazzy, trip-hop flavored musical settings verging at times on the ambient. Lyrically, we find an uncharacteristically subdued Dulli musing, “I fell far enough to touch the hand of Lucifer / stripped of all his glory” (“King Only”), yet still able to end the proceedings with the simple, upbeat proclamation, “Everything’s gonna be alright” (“Twilight”). An album that expands with repeated listenings, Twilight as played by The Twilight Singers is an inspired journey off the beaten musical path. It sounds like the second masterpiece of Greg Dulli’s brilliant career.

Twilight – Toronto Sun

Lee — Sat, 09 Sep 2000 20:05:23 +0000

In the Twilight
By KIERAN GRANT — Toronto Sun

Twilight, out Tuesday, is the disturbed soul exercise that smoky-voiced, fedora-sportin’ Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli has been threatening to carry out since the early ’90s. But the album’s predictability ends there.

�No mere side-project, The Twilight Singers come on like the Whig’s out-of-control id, replacing the latter band’s epic guitar bombast and psychosexual drama with murky electro-funk and psychosexual drama.

�The stalking, sultry serenades and heartbeat-paced beats and string passages do echo the Whigs’ more low-key passages on Black Love and 1965, but Dulli has wisely given them a life of their own. British conspirators Steve Cobby and Dave McSherry — who trade under the name Fila Brazillia — Pigeonhed’s Shawn Smith, and sometime Whigs keyboardist and Howlin’ Maggie frontman Harold Chichester offer musical depth to the singer’s already ample emoting.

�Rather than use The Twilight Singers as a platform to indulge his Curtis Mayfield fantasies, Dulli puts in an understated vocal performance that — despite sounding oddly like Roger Waters circa The Wall at times — might be his best since the Whigs’ 1994 showstopper Gentlemen.