Afghan Whigs

Gentlemen (Elektra ‘93) Rating: A-
You just gotta appreciate the honesty of someone who says “please let me tell you about myself, I got a dick for a brain” and “she wants love, and I still wanna fuck.” This album is a song cycle about such conflicting motives, and about being unable to escape wretched relationships. The music fits the ultra-intense verbal battles, and Greg Dulli’s whisper to a scream vocalizing builds many of these songs to melodramatic swells. Thankfully, Dulli is one helluva screamer, even if these angsty odes do get draining after awhile. It’s a good thing that his bandmates keep things interesting, incorporating soulful elements as well as grungy guitars (after all, the band used to be on Sub Pop) and tribal beats. It’s a tad too depressing to return to repeatedly, but the visceral delivery of relentless tracks such as “Gentlemen,” “Debonair,” and “Fountain & Fairfax” are difficult to deny, while slower songs such as “When We Two Parted” (my personal favorite) and the atmospheric closer “Brother Woodrow” are both incredibly intense and beautiful. Other highlights are the lushly melodic “What Jail Is Like” and the intense (there’s that word again) “My Curse,” which is sung by Scrawl’s Marcy Mays. These songs demonstrate the band’s ability to build their songs up to powerful moments of truth - right up to the moment where Dulli dutifully declares “I love you” to his bereaved lover. Both lyrically and musically ambitious, Gentlemen convincingly delivers hypnotic real life dramas and matches them to music that’s equally compelling, and the album offers no easy answers to truly troubling questions.

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