Saturnalia for me will always be a depressing landmark in Greg Dulli's career. Not because the albums marks any major dips in quality. And Dulli's collaboration with Lanegan is really nothing to be upset about. But for whatever reason, this is the album that has finally convinced me that Greg Dulli is a hack.
Very little on Saturnalia is worth remembering. To be honest, I've listened to it several times, and I can't remember more than a couple of songs well enough to write this review without putting the CD in and flipping through the tracks to refresh my memory. But that's okay. Nothing on this album should surprise anyone who's familiar with Dulli and Lanegan's recent work. It's all the same typically moody dark music they've been making for the last few years. The album opens with the Lanegan-sung song, "The Stations" which is good at setting a mood, but fails to ever build any real energy.
And it never really gets much better. "Idle Hands" opens with some interesting ominous vocals and vaguely foreign sounding guitar riffs, but it quickly morphs into a painfully bland rock song. Lanegan's deep voice has been put to great use in the past (more on this later), but here, both Dulli and Lanegan seem to count in it's tonal depth to make up for lacking musical and lyrical depth. Dulli's songs are a little bit better, but still not much more memorable. "All Misery/Flowers" sounds like it belongs on the first Twilight Singers album. The album picks steam in its last four tracks. "I was in love with you" is a genuinely pleasant song, and "Bete Noire" actually has more than Lanegan's voice going for it.
"Each to Each" is my favorite song on the album with it's electronic drums and near-absence of Mark Lanegan. This is the kind of seductive rock that Dulli has excelled at for years. Unfortunately, it's too little too late. And closing track "Front Street" quietly brings the album to a close, but because everything preceding it had failed to captivate in the first place, it feels like somewhat of an anti-climax.
More depressing than the songs on this album is what they reveal about Greg Dulli. The man is a hack. More specifically, his entire artistic persona is somewhat cheesy at best. Just the name of his latest project should make anyone with any taste groan. GUTTER TWINS? This has to be one of the worst band names ever. Or at least close. Was 3dgy Boyz taken? And then look at the artwork. The cover art is a trailer park on a stormy night. And the CD booklet has pictures of Lanegan and Dulli in a bar, in a bathroom and standing in front of a dilapidated building. And for some reason Dulli has a cigarette in all except one of the pictures.
Unfortunately, this kind of aesthetic has informed Dulli's entire career. It's taken me a while to be bothered by this because every now and then Dulli manages to write and record a truly great album. I'm apparently in a critical minority for thinking that The Afghan Wig's finest moment was 1995's Black Love. And this album puts Dulli's brooding self-centered persona on full display. Each lyric sheet is accompanied by a black and white photograph that supposedly matches the song. And the title Black Love is enough to make anyone cringe.
But as far as I'm concerned, that's where criticism of this album should end. Sure, the songs are overblown and melodramatic, but Dulli's able to deliver the goods. And "Summer's Kiss" is a burst of pure joy. And for all the gloominess, songs like "Going to Town" and "Blame, etc." should make even the most jaded listener want to dance. The album opens and closes with the same ambient noise. For "Crime Scene Part 1" it eases us into the searing music, and on "Faded" it allows us to catch our breath at the end of the album.
The Afghan Wigs next and final album 1965 was a very solid and enjoyable album, but it didn't come close to matching the ambition of its predecessor. And with the first Twilight Singers album, Dulli seemed permanently poised to move into at least somewhat sunnier territory. That ended with 2003's Blackberry Belle. While Black Love may be self obsessed and over ambitious, Blackberry Belle is a masterpiece in understatement. The guitars are never as loud as they were with The Afghan Wigs, the songs rarely strain much beyond four minutes. And Greg Dulli rarely yells, instead settling into his new role as a crooner.
While Black Love was searing, Blackberry Belle is a beautiful and delicate affair. Opening track "Martin Eden" begins with piano and almost whispered vocals. When the guitars come in, they lift the song up as Dulli sings "How wide? How deep the river? black - as dark as night. How long? How far? I'll know when I get to the other side." And eventually the song comes right back down to the same quiet beauty that it began with. This pretty much sums up every song on the album. Nearly every song on here feels both like a pop song and an epic at the same time.
Especially the closer, "Number Nine". Here, Dulli allows Lanegan to take most of the vocal duties (he wasn't an official member of this band at the time), and the results are stunning. Lanegan's deep voice puts more force behind the lyrics than Dulli ever could. The combination of soaring guitars and strings played over Lanegan's booming voice on the final verse is truly stunning.
So how can someone I called a "hack" make two amazing works of art like Black Love and Blackberry Belle? Obviously Dulli is a talented songwriter. But those talents are not always on display. My theory is that both of those albums are examples of what happens when Dulli is able to dig deep and put all of his emotional and spiritual turmoil onto an album. I remember reading something in Rolling Stone once where Dulli basically claimed that he couldn't perform some of the songs on Black Love because of where they took him.
While this sounds pretty melodramatic, and I have no idea what circumstances led to the writing of that collection of songs, the origins of Blackberry Belle are well documented. When Dulli's close friend director Ted Demme died suddenly of a heart attack, he scrapped an entire album's worth of material and wrote a new one in tribute to his dead friend. None of the songs refer to Demme directly in any way that I can tell, but as you can tell by the above lyrics I've quoted, it's an album that's pre-occupied with death and loss. You can hear the heartbreak in nearly every song on here.
And there lies the secret of Greg Dulli. He's not a clever lyricist. Sonically, his music provides no new insights. And his aesthetic sense is horrible. But somehow he manages to write some of the most memorable albums of recent memory. This doesn't stem from his raw musical ability. Rather, Dulli is able to create such master-works because of his impressive ability to dig deep within himself and put those difficult moments nakedly into songs. God that sentence is awful. But I don't know how else to describe it. Dulli's best moments are when he lays himself bare for the listener and allows the brooding musician facade fade away. The rest of the time he's a bore.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment