Twilight Singers
Twilight As Played by the Twilight Singers (Columbia)
Particular albums can forever hold a place in your heart, instantly recalling a certain period of your life or a specific event. For their creators, though, such collections can be even more affecting, full of complex, bittersweet connotations. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is a perfect example. An artistic and commercial triumph for the band in the late ’70s, the album is considered a pop gem by countless listeners. But for the members of Fleetwood Mac, despite its massive success, Rumours will always remind them of the volatile romantic tensions within the band, which fueled the songs contained within.
The “lost album” is a whole other thing altogether—a record that, for any number of reasons, has never seen the light of day and, as a result, has attained some sort of mythical stature. Fans love these records because they hold the allure and mystique of thwarted or uncovered genius. Such collections are often more fun to talk about than to listen to, but they’re still fun all the same. But once again, one man’s treasure is another man’s albatross: Pete Townsend’s Lifehouse, part of which turned into 1971’s Who’s Next, so consumed him that it left him depressed and suicidal. After haunting Townsend for three decades, the record came out in a six-CD version last year.
Both above-mentioned types of albums have haunted Greg Dulli during his own relatively short career as a musician. In 1993, his band the Afghan Whigs released Gentlemen, a churning song cycle detailing the slow, painful unraveling of a doomed relationship from the male perspective. The record’s exposed-nerve lyrics represented the gender flipside of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville, released that same year, while its flirtation with classic soul and R&B set it far apart from the trends on modern rock radio. Most popular music at the time seemed fairly demarcated—“white” grunge or “black” rap—and Greg Dulli’s references to the black pop music of the ’60s made for a welcome new sound.
In a roundabout way, that highly personal collection led to Dulli’s “lost” album. Although Gentlemen was a critical and cult success, the Whigs’ follow-up, Black Love, failed to build the band a larger following and resulted in a contentious relationship with its label, Elektra. Despondent, Dulli moved to New Orleans and considered abandoning the music business. Two friends, Harold Chichester and Shawn Smith, convinced him to embark on a solo endeavor to take his mind off his troubles. The Twilight Singers project, recorded only between dusk and dawn, was designed as a classic soul record in the mold of the ’60s Stax/Volt and Motown labels Dulli so idolizes. But when the Afghan Whigs were dropped from Elektra, the project was shelved so that the Whigs could make a record for their new label, Columbia.
Dulli resurrected the Twilight Singers for release this year, under the title Twilight As Played by the Twilight Singers. In the process, he purges some old demons—but not before tweaking the album into something quite unlike the many bootlegs that have appeared since the tracks were first recorded. The tapes were taken overseas, where they were remixed by Dulli with hot British electronica duo Fila Brazillia. The songs now have a more cinematic, modern R&B sound very different from the modern rock of the Afghan Whigs. From the opening piano tinklings and solemn guitar strum of “The Twilite Kid” to the randy, Prince-styled electro throb of the lovelorn “Annie Mae” to the TLC balladry of “Railroad Lullaby,” Greg Dulli has finally pursued his R&B jones wholeheartedly. If the Afghan Whigs are “a glorified bar band”—as Springsteen once called the E Street Band—then the Twilight Singers are a moody modern manifestation of the soul groups that bar bands aspire to be. If Marvin Gaye were still around, this is the type of sound he’d be working.
With Twilight, Dulli isn’t simply completing an unfinished artistic thought and realizing his musical aspirations. The album also seems to tackle the looming shadow of his most notable achievement, Gentlemen, marking his significant growth as a songwriter. Where prevailing attitude on the earlier release was one of macho indifference and that’s-just-the-way-it-is-baby cool—on which Dulli cockily proclaimed, “This ain’t about regret, it’s when I tell the truth”—Twilight is the work of a man who woke up two months later and realized what a jackass he was. It’s the late-night booty call of a guy begging his woman to forgive his arrogant mistakes and take him back.
“Annie Mae, seems I’ve gone and lost my way / As situations go, I think I can safely say / I’m lost baby, find me,” Dulli groans on “Annie Mae.” But the follow-up track, “Verti-Marte,” indicates that there will be no redemption offered for his sins, as a female voice repeats, “Goodbye, motherfucker.” With the damage done, Dulli sinks into various distractions to numb the pain: “Last Temptation” wallows in the debasement of cheap sex, declaring “Baby, I’m goin’ down / Get your hands up off me girl / I think I know my way around by now.” And once that vice has been exhausted, there’s nowhere left but the world of chemicals in “Railroad Lullaby,” with its confessions of “a life spent on the rail.”
But unlike Gentlemen, which ends with a bleak kiss-off, Twilight offers a suggestion of hope. After having a last moment of despair on the gothic folk of “Into the Street,” Dulli finds salvation in the closing title track. Over a slowly building but easygoing groove, he asks, “Do you remember anything about me? / I was the one when hope was gone / Who took too long to sing this song,” before going out with the classic soul mantra of “Everything’s gonna be alright.”
There are very few young pop songwriters around today who can write with the authority of a Costello or a Springsteen. Twilight is a sign that Greg Dulli is continuing to grow, that he might end up being just that good one day. It’s one of this year’s finest releases—a glorious and seductive makeout record, but one with a bruised heart.
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