London Show Announced For August
Via The Gutter Twins MySpace Blog
The Gutter Twins have announced that they will perform at Shepherds Bush Empire in London on Wednesday, August 13 2008. This is one of many shows the band will be playing this Summer. We will announce the other dates as they become available.
Gutter Twins a Pick at C|Net, Junk Media
→ Saturnalia is featured on C|Net’s Crossfade TV
→ Album of the week at Junk Media
Saturnalia - Junk Media
Junkmedia
Rating: 4/5
Has Greg Dulli found religion? Its hard not to think so after hearing Saturnalia, the debut record from his long-in-gestation collaboration with Mark Lanegan, where the two dark lords of alt-rock sing of regret, redemption and, well, God. Practically every song is filled with religious and Biblical imagery, some literal album-opener “The Stations,” where lyrics about the Rapture butt up against the title itself, a reference to the Catholic Stations of the Cross and others, like the gorgeous “The Body,” more metaphorical.
But Dulli, late of the Afghan Whigs and taking a busmans holiday from his current band, The Twilight Singers, and ex-Screaming Trees frontman Lanegan — himself involved in projects as diverse as Queens Of The Stone Age and two records of ballads with with Belle and Sebastians Isobel Campbell — are looking at the Pearly Gates from a spot way down below. Sufjan Stevens or Pedro The Lion this aint. For ever note about resurrection and spiritual redemption, were reminded that “Heaven is quite a climb/From seven stories underground.” Dullis feral soul stud is outgunned here by Lanegans grim reaper persona— when the latter sings in the apocalyptic “All Misery/Flowers,” “little girls might twitch at the way I itch/But when I burn its a son of a bitch… I did it all just to get through to Heaven,” you pretty much expect the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse to add a fifth rider to their posse.
Dulli and Lanegan play off well together, with Dullis expressive soul-man crooning bashing up against Lanegans sandpaper growl; the songs are structured that, when the two trade off vocals mid-song in “The Stations” and in the records strongest track, the soaring “Circle The Fringes,” the shift in tone only amps up the songs dramatic quotient — its like hearing The Righteous Brothers by way of early Alice Cooper.
Saturnalia works best when the duo arent trying to hard to impress — the busy-sounding, electronica-tinged “Each To Each” leaves Lanegans bark sticking out like a sore thumb. But stripped-down numbers like Lanegans surprisingly soulful “Who Will Lead Us?” and Dullis harrowing, acoustic “Front Street” show the two at their most relaxed Dulli has thankfully ditched the vocal processing that got in the way of the power of his pipes on the last couple of Twilight Singers records. Rocker “Idle Hands” — with Arabic-sounding strings gliding over a thudding, hellbent-for-leather rhythm track — puts the two at maximum comfort level with a sound that hearkens back to both the Screaming Trees and early Whigs songs like “Hated” or “Conjure Me.”
Dulli and Lanegan may see God ahead of them, but they still have hellhounds on their trail: “With my idle hands/Theres nothing I can do,” Lanegan snarls, “But be the Devils plaything, baby/And know that Ive been used.” Dark and bracing, Saturnalia is the perfect record for that lapsed Catholic in your life.
Mark Cappelletty
A glance at the stars
A glance at the stars - Music - Entertainment - smh.com.au
These two forces share a murky past and a thrilling collaboration.
PERFECT collaborations between established artists are few and far between. Rarer still are such projects that surpass just about everything each contributor has done before. Projects that result in albums such as Saturnalia by the Gutter Twins.
These black-clad “twins” comprise (the unrelated) Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan, two legends in alternative-rock circles. Dulli was the devilishly suave frontman for the Afghan Whigs, about the most soulful American guitar band of the ’90s. When they disbanded in 2001, he formed the Twilight Singers, who seamlessly, gorgeously picked up where the Whigs left off.
Lanegan’s Marlboro-ravaged growl first attracted attention with Screaming Trees, the breathtaking Seattle grunge-era rockers that would have been, in a parallel just universe, as big as Nirvana. His distinctive tones have since occasionally added an extra, creepy dimension to Queens Of The Stone Age and appeared on several remarkable solo albums. Lanegan also regularly collaborates with one-time Belle & Sebastian chanteuse Isobel Campbell.
Having once shared a house as well as having worked together on Twilight Singers recordings, there was always a chance Dulli and Lanegan might join forces to make a very special album but no one could have expected anything quite as rich as the brooding, thrilling rock of Saturnalia. Indeed, few probably expected them to complete it. The duo wrote their first songs as the Gutter Twins in December 2003, then two more in 2004 before reuniting last year to finish the job.
“Mark was flying over to Scotland to work with Isobel again,” Dulli says. “I told him when we [the Twilight Singers] were in Brisbane to meet me in New Orleans in 30 days and we would start finishing [the album]. And 30 days later I picked him up from the airport.
“I think it’s a tribute to our tenacity - just that we kept at it for that long. Y’know, for something to stretch on for a seemingly infinite amount of time and come out as cohesive as it did.”
The long wait may seem reasonable, given the duo’s full creative plates, but these two also have murky histories that could have provided major distractions. Both have battled with substance abuse in the past.
“People do things and they don’t do things any more,” Dulli says. “Did I do drugs? Sure. Does that have anything to do with my album or my songs? No.”
Some might say it does.
“Ah. How?”
Aside from the fact it took two seasoned musicians more than four years to make an album, there’s the idea of inspiration from altered senses.
“Right. Well, listen, man. I have no regrets. I did what I did and now I do what I do. I wrote some great songs loaded. I’m not gonna lie. And I’m not here to tell some cautionary tale of ‘don’t do drugs’. Do what you want. Don’t kill people. Don’t hurt children. Other than that, y’know, fine.”
Saturnalia positively seethes. Its atmosphere is thick with menace as bass lines rumble and drums shuffle sombrely. The two singers’ distinctive voices work effectively whether they’re taking turns or crooning in harmony, while guitars, piano and restrained strings provide the evocative melodies.
It makes one wonder how the mood must have been during the recording. Was it true to the image fans have of Dulli and Lanegan maybe drinking a virgin’s blood and smoking her bones before knuckling down? Dulli laughs.
“It’s kinda like that,” he says. “Before every songwriting session we would drive to farm and find a baby goat and, y’know, put it on the altar and do some incantations … you’re not far off.”
It’s worth noting at this point that when offered Dulli or Lanegan for this interview, Spectrum couldn’t ask for the former quickly enough. They’re both known for their dark lyrics but Dulli’s humour has always come across, too.
“He’s hilarious, man,” Dulli says in Lanegan’s defence. “Honestly, if you would have heard the original words for all these songs, you probably would have [thought] they were written by a 10-year-old. ‘Cause we had melodies and then we started working on the words and the words always were designed to make the other one laugh.
“So we would go through that first … and then the baby goat would come out and we’d get serious.”
Saturnalia - Harp (Full Review)
Greg Dulli is a hot dog, a fast-talking soul boy whose giddy literate lyricism made his dippy punkish Afghan Whigs the oddball toast of Sub Pop’s early-’90s label establishment. By the time Dulli got to the harder, groovier stuff (literally, in regard to his addiction-addled chatter) of the Twilight Singers, he couldn’t shut the speed rapping even when slowing down for his best effort, 2006’s Powder Burns. Mark Lanegan is a slower-burning ember. But it’s a measuredly wordy brushblaze Lanegan’s tossed gasoline onto so far: raging across the SST (and, later, Epic) landscape for the grueling grunge of Screaming Trees, then submitting a series of immensely wrenching emotional vocals to everyone from Queens of the Stone Age, Isobel Campbell and Soulsavers to his own efforts (notably 2004’s Bubblegum, his warmest solo work).
In full possession of his goods and his ghosts, then, Lanegan also sung on his best bud Dulli’s Twilight Singers’ 2006 EP A Stitch in Time. But Gutter Twins is the rich impressionistic meeting and melding of the wronged and wronging minds in real time. Fire, meet ice; cocaine, meet heroin.
Like a searing cross between “Gimme Shelter” and “Kashmir,” a song like “The Stations” rises as it rings, its singed guitars and rolling rhythms epically bolstering down and at once lifting their talk of the godly and the pleading. It’s a bountiful, prayerful beginning and a gorgeous portent of what’s to come as their voices, scuffed and silvery, blend often as one. While “Who Will Lead Us?” does its ethereally bluesy and (mostly) acoustic best to mumble out loud about where the chariot will park and how much the fee might be, “Seven Stories Underground” uses its dense electronic pucker and percussive clack to match the might of a woman’s mouth to that of Heaven above. From the high-pitched magical mystery whirr and mumbled romanticism of Dulli’s “I Was in Love With You” to Lanegan’s holy dread, strum and thud of “All Misery/Flowers,” Saturnalia is as if conjoined twins, once separated, had been—corny, but true—united at the soul.
Their menacing solo voices may seem plucked and struck from the same, sometimes sentimental, center. But when they sing at once in rancid harmony, it’s as if the Everlys had died and gone to Purgatory to play out their darkest days before the big decision.
By A. D. Amorosi
‘Idle Hands’ and the Hammer of the Gods : NPR Music
‘Idle Hands’ and the Hammer of the Gods : NPR Music
Back in the ’90s, few alt-rock frontmen built personas as macho and brawl-ready as Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan and Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli. They seemed to have stepped out of a Mickey Spillane novel as much as indie-rock, but on records they made after their respective bands dissolved, both men toned down both their pose and their music. Now that they’re working together as The Gutter Twins, however, they’ve forged a new hammer of the gods for themselves, to enthralling effect.
The reverberating, echo-driven chant that opens “Idle Hands” — from the first Gutter Twins album, Saturnalia — sounds as if it were written to rev up a stadium crowd. From there, it shifts into a metallic stomp, complete with swooping strings and Lanegan’s dark-lord delivery, complete with elliptical references to suffering, “cold lips,” and “the devil’s plaything” that hint at sex, death, and masochism.
The results could have been cheesy, if not embarrassing — the sound of grown men with a Dungeons & Dragons obsession. But just as in the old days, Lanegan and Dulli are so inherently earnest that “Idle Hands” becomes a pulpy hard-rock classic. After years of exploring the gentler side of their art (Lanegan on his solo albums and a disc with Isobel Campbell, Dulli with The Twilight Singers), they realize that there’s nothing wrong with tapping back — temporarily, at least — into one’s inner, tormented teen.
The Gutter Twins on Later
The Gutter Twins will be one of musical guests on Later With Jools Holland during their LIVE broadcast April 29th on BBC2 at 10:00PM. The band will share the stage with James, Mable John, Operator Please, Pentangle and Melody Gardot. The full show will then air on Friday May 2nd at 11:35PM on BBC2 as well.
Due to this opportunity the band will reschedule their shows in Bilbao and Lisbon. However, the Twins will be returning to Europe later this summer and hope to make up the dates.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/later/
http://www.myspace.com/laterwithjoolsholland
Dulli on “Crazy Rain”
The latest Joseph Arthur EP, Crazy Rain, was released today and features Greg Dulli on the song “Nothin 2 Hide.”
Saturnalia - Green Bay Press-Gazette
The Gutter Twins’ sound matches name in ‘Saturnalia’
By Thomas Rozwadowski
You won’t find a more appropriate new band name than The Gutter Twins.
It’s music mired in grime, with spiritual imagery swirling amid the dark Gothic overtones and disparate vocals of alt-rock’s two most indulgent figureheads, Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan.
The stellar collaboration has been several years in the making, and whatever led to its delay helped give the final product a real sense of purpose.
From Lanegan that could probably be expected. The former Screaming Trees (”Nearly Lost You”) frontman’s primeval growl dominates whether singing lead or background vocals. Couple that with Dulli’s (Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers) sex-soaked croon and it’s a flawless juxtaposition for an album filled with songs about good and evil, hope and violence, sanctity and sin.
While the building crescendo in “Idle Hands” is “Saturnalia’s” standout moment, opening track “The Stations” is a prime starting point. It’s the perfect collision of sound and fury.
The track moves like an ominous storm cloud, the black and blacker of Lanegan and Dulli’s vocals intensifying before the entire sky is cloaked in darkness. Lyrically, it gathers the same sense of impending doom (”I hear the Rapture’s coming/They say he’ll be here soon/Right now there’s demons crawling/All around my room.”) while strings, guitar and drums thrash about in a sinister chorus.
Then, just as quickly as the storm comes, everything fades. Redemption will arrive another day.
The Gutter Twins, Manchester Review
Manchester Evening News
Chris Gilliver
THAT Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan have both shared more than a passing fondness for drugs use is often repeated (Lanegan was a teenage heroin addict, and is said to have saved Dulli’s life by getting him off cocaine).
What is not said, if it is said at all, is that Mark Lanegan is by far one of the most gifted vocalists and songwriters of the last 20 years.
Most people will be aware of his work with Queens of the Stone Age, Screaming Trees and Isabelle Campbell, but it has been his much under exposed solo works Field Songs and Bubblegum that have been the true high points of his career, the stripped down folk backing laying bare his cracked growl.
Tonight he rightly and necessarily takes centre stage and remains almost completely still throughout, his faintly nodding head the only sign of life. Apparently this is Lanegan when he is rocking out.
The much more effervescent Greg Dulli of Afghan Whigs/Twilight Singers fame, the other Twin, makes up for what Lanegan lacks, and spends the majority of the gig fizzing round him and goading the audience.
Akin
For those of you have not heard it, The Gutter Twins’ work is more akin to Lanegan’s solo stuff, but with more polished production.
From the first track, Saturnalia’s opener God’s Children, it quickly becomes clear that we are on for quite a show tonight, their complimentary voices creating a stirringly dark atmosphere.
Single Idle Hands is one of the more up-tempo moments, but no one is moving and it is clearly frustrating Dulli who asks the audience to imagine, “It’s like a football game and Liverpool’s kicking their ass”. The man has done his research (it is the night of the Champions League Quarter Final between Liverpool and Arsenal).
He begs the audience to “shake their hips”, but how are you supposed to dance to this? It would be like dancing at a wake.
Wild cheers
He asks the audience to, “Let me feel you”, and finally this is met with wild cheers. The crowd are clearly appreciating the performance, just not in the way the band want.
They continue undaunted, and dig out surprise highlight of the night, a cover of Massive Attack’s soulful classic Live With Me: a great track by a supreme band given a new twist by the Gutter Twins. It is still slow, but rather than being mournful, it is almost threatening.
After a quick break the band are coaxed back on for an encore, always a bit of a sham, and we are treated to two Lanegan solo tracks: the awesome Hit The City, originally featuring P. J. Harvey, and Methamphetamine Blues. Awesome moments that remind us we are in the presence of a rock legend.
Closing track Number 9 sees two people in front of me gently swaying from side to side. This is the closest thing to hip shaking Dulli’s going to get.
The main problem with Saturnalia is that it is over-produced. Here the limited acoustics of Academy 3 have unintentionally stripped the music down and given it a raw, rustic feel, and the sound is massively enhanced as a result.
It has been a night to remember. We leave knowing we have seen two top musicians, both of them probably lucky to be here, at the top of the game. It is time they were given a bit more commercial success as solo artists.
Great gig.
The Gutter Twins: Saturnalia The long awaited debut from Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan
Order CD at Amazon.com
