The Twilight Singers - Powder Burns

Recorded in New Orleans a few months after Katrina devastated it, generators at the ready to supply electricity when the power failed, Powder Burns is former Afghan Whigs frontdude Greg Dulli's finest work in a decade. It's widely and wisely been hailed as the most solid Twilight Singers release to date, as it combines the sultry and hazy lounge air of the first three Singers records with the scorched earth intensity of the Whigs. Fancy guests abound--Ani DiFranco, Joseph Arthur, former A.W. bassist John Curley--but the focus rarely strays from Dulli's sex-soaked, melodramatic croon. "I Wish I Was" sounds like a great lost Chocolate Genius song until the bombastic chorus kicks in. There are dozens of elements here--super multi-tracked choruses, Beatles-referring hooks, ridonculously classic rock guitar solos, vaguely dance-y drum programming, rousing piano lines, etc.--that would sound poseur-y or played out most anywhere else. But on Powder Burns, they just sound like damn good music. --Mike McGonigal Amazon.com

Worth it for Candy Cane Crawl alone

But as you see, I gave Powder Burns a 5 star rating, because the entire album, with its swings from raw rock snarl to sultry, soft croon, is a musical treasure. Greg Dulli really can croon, sweetly, even when his lyrics are tough to swallow, as in Candy Cane Crawl and Dead To Rights. The perfect backup vocals (Ani Difranco could not be more perfect in Dulli's songs here) and lush arrangements, layered sometimes with string flourishes and acoustic guitars, are just plain gorgeous, never under or over produced. The Conversation is a quiet acoustic of this sort. Forty Dollars is electric & piano & stomping beats with a snarling vocal telling a sordid tale of Dulli's lifetime demons, which fans of his will know quite well. At the end of Forty Dollars he says he's just bein' honest, which he has always been in his music & which makes his music all the more gritty & appealingly raw. There's Been an Accident, Candy Cane Crawl, Dead to Rights and I Wish I Was (a song with a slow sexy groove and light horns in the background) show GD has only gotten better over the years. There is an interesting story behind the creating of this record, well worth looking up on the Twilight Singers website. If you are a fan of GD, which you probably are if you are reading this, you owe yourself to get this album and the story behind it. December 18, 2007

getting closer, Mr. Dulli

Greg Dulli - intelligent, talented, tormented, and charming. Essential elements for any great artist. So why has Dulli never really achieved the success his abilities might justify? I never much cared for the Afghan Whigs; Dulli rambled on in his whiny snarl about things I felt no connection to, and the music was not quite good enough to overcome the mediocre production and bad mixing of their songs. I wrote off Greg Dulli after Gentlemen, and vowed never to return. Fast forward to the 21st century, and Dulli has rematerialized in the form of the Twilight Singers. I decided to check it out. Blackberry Belle reveals some promise, but the consensus is that Powder Burns is superior to this work. The opener of PB, "I'm Ready" is intense but crippled by another poor mix. Things don't look good. Then all the noise drops away, the mysterious piano line of "There's Been An Accident" begins, and I am caught. It sounds like Goo Goo Dolls for drug addicts instead of for angsty teenagers. More good stuff follows, "Bonnie Brae," "Forty Dollars" (which is great except for the poor decision to include the chorus from "She Loves You"), "Dead To Rights," and the poignant closer "I Wish I Was." What impressed me most is that there is some great songwriting here - much better than I ever expected from Dulli based on his track record. However, there are problems. The production is better but still sub-par, the songs tend to fizzle out after starting wonderfully ("Dead To Rights" being a prime example), and the vocal performances generally aren't up to the standard set by the music. I still recommend this album though, and hold the hope that next time around Dulli will be able to pull it all together and deliver a fantastic album that a wider audience will be able to appreciate. July 24, 2007

The Twilight Singers turn in another epic, rollicking, rock n' roll revelation

I wrote this review in May 2006 but I'm starting to lift reviews from my blog and post them on Amazon: The Twilight Singers' new record, "Powder Burns," is a revelation. Which is saying something for Greg Dulli, who is one of the most consistent songwriters in rock. The liner notes for this album, like the ones it follows, charts its recording locales with the phrase "shot on location" because Dulli's records feel cinematic...

Like an Altman film, instead of progressing, the album unravels, exploring themes of addiction, despondency, isolation, sexuality, self destruction, unhealthy codependency, and taking the dark corners of the id out for a good stretch regardless of the consequences.

In a genre which either ignores classic R&B, or injects it into the music as a hokey novelty, Dulli stands alone in his effortless, hybrid tour-de-force. It is an esthetic that owes as much to Marvin Gaye's vanguard musical and vocal arrangements from the latter years at Motown, when the album slows for quick breathers on "Candy Cane Crawl" and "Dead To Rights", as it does to the darkness of the very best Rolling Stones records. In a time of pretenders and transient flavors-of-the-month in so-called "alternative," independent music, Dulli is unique,...lasting. Ironically, this may be why a higher level of popularity and success will always elude him. The audience which will by a Twilight album but is unfamiliar with Dulli may struggle with a record which departs from the "alternative" genre's established, narrow parameters. Not very alternative, eh? But then, Gaye challenged his following with "I Want You" very much in the same way...and here I am in 2006 calling on him and it as an exemplar so...

Sounding more like Dulli's former band, the Afghan Whigs, than any of the past Twilight records, the album bristles with taut, grinding riffs which fill the background of each scene; they are a supporting cast for dark and aggressive vocals- especially on stand-outs "I'm Ready," "Bonnie Brae," and seemingly ever building "There's Been An Accident." Dulli's arrangement of "Accident" is brilliant, reaching a dramatic crescendo which captures maybe his most-passionate vocal performance ever.

And yet, I think Dulli is still developing,...improving. Why shouldn't I? Every album in his career is a testament to his progress toward a plateau of song writing in rock that many of his contemporaries will never see...they can't.
- Raindog (5.21.06)

March 25, 2007

Never A Dulli Moment

One of the premier songwriters who always delivers a tormented musical portrait is Greg Dulli, one-time leader of the criminally overlooked Afghan Whigs and current chief of The Twilight Singers.
It's a wry album title for someone who's long battled a nose candy addiction, but Greg Dulli never ceases to turn in a staggering performance on record. Even 2004's covers album She Loves You - in hindsight an obvious stopgap while Dulli attempted to break free of drug addiction and rediscover his lyrical fire - offered an amazing retelling of divergent tracks made famous by everyone from Billie Holliday to Bjork.
My Time Has Come is The Twilight Singers' take on Sympathy For The Devil, exhibiting the danger of The Rolling Stones of the late `60s. The song conjures visuals of Dulli walking hand in hand with the Prince Of Darkness as the songwriter documents his own demise.
Where once Dulli found himself backed by soul singers and crooning his way through albums, Powder Burns finds the frontman relying more heavily on his alternative tattered style of vocal delivery. Fellow gnarled drug survivor Mark Lanegan again pops up on a Twilight Singers release, albeit in sampled form on Candy Cane Crawl, while Dulli's interest in Beatles (having previously worked on the Fab Four biopic Backbeat and performing John Lennon's Real Love) also rears its head on Forty Dollars, where he reprises their early smash She Loves You.
Recorded in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Dulli still proves to be a rogue wave in a sea of listless rock performers. August 3, 2006

Proof that music ain't dead yet.

There are people out there listening to the radio. They want to be rescued. Long since tired of riding dirty on a honkytonk badonkadonk that makes one want to la-la, there are some that would argue that Y2K was really the day the music died. (If not even sooner, but those folks didn't like Nirvana, Alice in Chains or Soundgarden. Go figure.)

Well, anyone who's heard "Gentlemen" or "Congregation" or any other record by the Afghan Whigs should be yelling "Rescue me, Dulli!" And on "Powder Burns," Greg's delivered the goods.

Possibly the most soul-infused yet forward-thinking rock record since the Whigs' "Black Love," the new Twilight Singers record still shouldn't be construed as an Afghan Whigs album without the name. Despite Dulli wearing lead singer shoes, which definitely aids in stamping any project with a signature raspy-throated, tunelessly-endearing sound, the backing band and instrumentation are a far cry from the rabies-inflicted punk animal that was the Whigs. Sure, it's dirty, dirty, grungy blues-rock, but one might be surprised what creeps into a song here and there. "Bonnie Brae" is a melancholy headbanger that could almost be called blue-collar shoegaze. Piano and violin pepper tracks like "There's Been An Accident," while rushing, watery electronic influence is lovingly splashed here and there, most obviously on the intro piece "Toward the Waves"/"I'm Ready."

Of course to think ahead, people usually end up looking back to see how good music was made in the first place. Dulli liked smashing Beatles riffs around on his covers record so much that he's taken to purloining lyrics, too, reframing the timeless refrain of "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" with a derisive sneer and a cranky guitar din ("Forty Dollars").

Not every word on "Powder Burns" is an homage, however. Lyrically, Dulli has always struck me as a singing Charles Bukowski. Sometimes it's exactly who you need to hear from to fall asleep at night when you're too bleary-eyed to read. July 23, 2006

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