the afghan whigs: black love

Critical acumen (or lack of it) is something I think about often. For better or worse, at present, I'm really just relying on, or bringing attention to, the primacy of emotional response and trusting (inhabiting?) that - while being aware that it's a fallible, suspicious register or, at the very least, only part of the process of working out why one likes something.

Anyway, after not using my car for the best part of two months, I've taken to listening to this when I have to drive and I've nearly had to pull over a couple of times. Sure, there are lots of things happening to all of our deep workings and who knows what damage has been done, but Summer's Kiss in particular completely destroys me. It's partly a thing of pure pleasure at the production and the unbridled roar of the guitars but there's something tectonic working down there that I don't really get. The final crescendo is one of those things where I wish I could have been in the studio so I could say don't stop there! ffs, but glad that I can't be so that I'm powerless and can have that exquisite release each time. Then Faded happens and oh fucking hell I'm just a blubbering wreck of a man.

"Honky's Ladder" has the worst lyrics, but the best guitar. "

"WTF is Honky's Ladder about?"

I think it is the best tune on the LP and definitely one to go on the Whigs best songs. I take the lyrics being someone shaking down someone with a pistol to the face requesting money for the drugs they have provided, perhaps to a close friend or relative.

I admit that the lyrics don't read well, but they do fit the music perfect. It is like when you first saw the lyrics to "Gimme Shelter" wrote out - you might go, 'is that it?' I'd kinda compare the tunes in that they both have that menace and forboding to them, albeit the Whigs song is very less known. The track does seem like a tune ready made for a 90s crime sound track.

chinaski i used to cry A LOT (like a lot a lot a lot) while listening to this album -- while walking, while driving, while seated at home. it wasn't nostalgia and it couldn't have always been pms, so i think this album has some magical quality that zings right to the feelings and electrifies them. bulletproof was my personal ultimate catalyst for uncontrollable weeping.

i'll never forget seeing their first reunion show at the bowery ballroom and realizing they were going to do "bulletproof" -> "summer's kiss," i think i burst into tears

lol @ how many times i've brought up that show in this thread

But it really can't be said enough how life-changingly great this band is live.

"Black Love" benefits I think from following "Gentlemen," which I think as far as it goes was sort of an accidental crossover. That is, timing and critical acclaim put the band on the radar for people peak-grunge/alt, but ultimately the group just had too much going on (or were too heavy or intense or whatever) for the average alt day tripper. Kind of like the folks who picked up "Laid" by James based on the single. That's one of my favorite albums of all time, but so much of it is so spare and ghostly and subdued that anyone (at least in America) that went for the single might not have dug the rest. So back to "Black Love," I feel that album slipped under the radar in a way. Either it was not the album casual fans expected after "Gentlemen," or it was too much the album the band should have made after "Gentlemen," if that makes any sense. All I know is that at the time there were countless copies of "Black Love," like "Laid," clogging up the used CD bins.

"honky's ladder" was a weird choice of lead single and i think dulli's said that it was the label's decision that he disagreed with and that they had a lot of other trouble with their label at the time. "my enemy" always seemed like the most obvious single to me but it wasn't one

i feel like if "going to town" didn't do it for them nothing would

yeah I agree with that

I NEED to see these duys live again at some point. Their coheadlining set with BTS was amazing but TOO SHORT.

Is their an interview or article where Dulli talks about his connection to Los Angeles? I know he lived there before/during the Afghan Whigs early days.

He owns or owns a couple of bars there.

He worked at Tower Records on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood I think around 1984-1985, before the formation of the Whigs. It's a block and a half from the Whisky and about a 20 minute walk to the corner of Fountain & Fairfax. I remember he talked about writing most of Big Top Halloween out there, but I was wondering if there was a longer piece where he talks more in depth about his life and times living in Hollywood during the glam-rock era.

i recall a twilight singers show shortly after elliott smith died during which he went on at *excruciating* length about how they knew each other in la and where they hung out, etc etc as the band vamped endlessly

good album

it's absurd to me that Gentlemen got almost 2x the votes in the album poll thread. Black Love is obviously the better, more fully realized album.

your bad takes scourge me

1965 > Black Love > Gentlemen

^^^^ black love is my fave but any ranking of those records is legit

They are each incredible, emotive, savage, funny, thrilling records. All clearly come from the same writer & same players, working in the same genre - Dulli’s voice would be clear as a writer of words even if his vocals weren’t on them - yet each has a distinctive tone that holds for the whole album.

There’s no wrong way to rank them.

imo you can also throw twilight in there

Black love > gentlemen > 1965

I still find 1965 spotty & a tad embarrassing. Would not play it for someone who has never heard them to say “hey I once totally loved this band”
Black Love best communicates best what I love about this band.

Solidarity on the crying front, La Lechera!

Another thing about the impact of Summer's Kiss is how it makes a call to Suffering by Satchel: the lyric 'put on your old fur coat, it's 1973' features in both and I have no idea which was first and don't care.

Dulli is an unusual case. I like savage as a descriptor for him as he does have a wildness - in the pit of his voice and in the way he roams around within a bar, pressing at the boundaries, to the point where it feels improvisatory a lot of the time.

I think I'd take Congregation over 1965 tbh (despite a few incredible songs on the latter)

This is their best album by quite some distance - more fully formed songwriting than Gentlemen and not as hammy as 1965. Even if the hamminess is part of the point this album just hits the perfect midpoint between the fire, the sleaze, the darkness and moments of unexpected beauty.

my main arguments for Black Love > Gentlemen is the production is fuller and it has a real ending

imo you can also throw twilight in there

No less good, but entirely different players*, and the character is writing in a tone of regret & reaching toward redemption, instead of celebrating their assholism. Which makes for a great sequel, after the increase of swagger:self-loathing ratio across the last three, but further marks it as separate.

* bar a couple of guest stars obv

As I throw the chains
I forged in life
To shatter on the floor

chinaski i used to cry A LOT (like a lot a lot a lot) while listening to this album -- while walking, while driving, while seated at home. it wasn't nostalgia and it couldn't have always been pms, so i think this album has some magical quality that zings right to the feelings and electrifies them. bulletproof was my personal ultimate catalyst for uncontrollable weeping.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 20 June 2020 13:38 (four months ago) link

This is just one of those rare albums that for whatever reason (I'm not really even sure what it is) it connects with certain listeners on level different anything else. Like if I put this record on right now it would completely wreck me or possibly send me on a drug/booze/crime bender

This album has duende

Just imagining the first wall of guitar in Summer's Kiss and is making me want to walk into the midnight sea.

I haven't heard anything by Afghan Whigs other than this. I remember a lot of wah-wah guitar and clavinet and no tunes, except Night by Candlelight, which I love and makes me think of Prince gone goth.

this is the best afghan whigs album but everyone who's ever liked them really needs to hear In Spades if they haven't already

"Faded"....jesus what a fucking epic song, actual goosebumps right now

This album has duende

― handsome boy modelling software (bernard snowy), Monday, November 2, 2020 2:19 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

love this. seems like a good thread idea.

btw 'faded' > 'purple rain'

I know it's a night for the biggest of takes, but this still shakes the foundations. And is true.

<3

still most amazed because i was much more a fan of ppl gazing at shoes than dulli's over-the-top entertainer thing . . . but somehow the shtick still worked on me

obviously it didn't work on a lot of people, and he certainly wasn't in prince's class, but he was much better at it than seems reasonable

I've been luxuriating in the Twilight Singers discography and the thing is Dulli is just a really consistently awesome songwriter

Considering some of the bands that DID get tons of FM Xradio play, I just don't get why they did not play these guys. I think that about a few of the other 90s bands too.

25 years ago today. pic.twitter.com/Xb9eBA9yNt

— greg dulli (@MrGregDulli) March 12, 2021

really it's about as perfect as rock albums get

Agreed

bought this the day it came out ffs

still an incredible record on every level

fuck

we should also be very thankful that Dulli's movie never got made, could have needlessly sullied this project if it sucked (which let's be real it probably would have)

It’s just Dulli in a belted leather jacket going for a ride/going to town in different settings and different times of day for 95-100 minutes

the weird thing about a movie is that presumably the characters would have to have jobs, whereas in greg dulli songs it always feels like everyone's occupation is "lover"

straight in

It was a Saturday
I came home early
Drunk with love
And other things