The Twilight Singers
Paradiso, Amsterdam
16/01/04
It took a matter of seconds in the Paradiso for Greg Dulli to prove his rock star quality still exudes in abundance. Swaggering onstage a minute behind the rest of this assembled band to milk the applause from a full room, as soon as he let rip with that old trademark wail he clings to, there was no mistaking that not only is Greg Dulli back, but that The Twilight Singers are also a musical force to reckon with, doing justice to the legacy of The Afghan Whigs which lies behind them.
The first thing to become clear is just how much the songs were going to be pushed and moulded into something much more harder and dangerous than anything on record. While Blackberry Belle is clearly a long lost cousin of the Whigs, there is still much more space for mellowness and subtlety. When performed live, that same subtlety went right out the stained glass windows of the Paradiso and was replaced by multitudes of rock‘n’roll energy and attitude, not only from Dulli but from the four assisting cast members. Lacking the horn sections and gospel choirs of the last Afghan Whigs European tour in ’99, they still made a lot of racket and generated as much energy as a rock band possibly can, from the kneeling guitar solos, to the leaping and in turn the guitar strap completely snapping from the stresses placed upon it, and the pieces of drum kit flying off into the air after being continuously obliterated for an hour. If you desperately need to see a band loving every note of what they are playing, then surprisingly, The Twilight Singers may be that band currently.
Two nights previously the same band had visited Amsterdam for a VPRO live radio session and it didn’t quite grip your attention with the same style; the vocals sitting almost harshly on top of the instrumentation. The room at the Paradiso wasn’t flawed similarly, thankfully, as not only did the lead vocals sit perfectly, but so did the fantastic backing vocals, setting the perfect tone for all those nocturnal songs which typically only exist between 2AM and 5AM in the world of Dulli.
While ‘Esta Noche’, ‘Decatur St.’, and ‘Teenage Wristband’ lead off the trail of tracks from Blackberry Belle, the album didn’t dominate proceedings as may have been expected. Instead the band would slip comfortably in and out of cover songs. From the John Coltrane/Marvin Gaye combination of ‘Love Supreme’/‘Please Stay’, to Nina Simone, to the Beatles, and eventually stopping off with Outkast’s ‘Hey Ya’, the song to definitively stop the audience in its tracks. Not simply because it was both fun and funny, but because it was pulled off in complete seriousness without parody, and everyone just fell under its spell and started dancing.
It does appear the rest of the band is never quite sure what is going to come next, just like the audience. Many songs transform into something completely new halfway through, and a lot of credit should be administered towards those musicians for continually being able to step up to whatever is thrown out by Dulli and match him step by step. And you also never know when a segment of your favourite Afghan Whigs track may appear as part of another song, and if it finally did, that alone was surely good enough to secure a fantastic evening. The complete inclusion of oldies like ‘King Only’ and ‘66’ also demonstrating that Dulli isn’t simply throwing away his past, but is mainly concerned with what feels right in the present, and making many fans happy in the process.
Of course, his preoccupation with sex is very much still obvious, too. He may have become a podgy man in black, harnessing an endless cigarette in one hand and a glass of bourbon in another, but it seems nothing will ever tarnish the fact that he feels like he’s the sexiest person in the room. When he believes it, the rest of the world starts to buy it, and with a rock show that consists of one third rock’n’roll exuberance, one third cabaret, and finally one third of unadulterated class, who’s to argue? Better than the Afghan Whigs? Probably not. Better than the majority of younger bands on the live circuit? Definitely yes.
Steven McCarron
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