Afghan Whigs – In Spades
Afghan Whigs' latest offering In Spades is just the kind of music you’d expect Greg Dulli and the boys to be producing in 2017, proving the outfit are as complex, contrary, savage, and as glorious as they have ever been.
Let’s start with that famous contrariness: album opener, Birdland, all brusque hoots and abrupt time signatures makes sure you never forget this is a band whose frame of musical reference takes in Charlie Parker as much as Led Zeppelin. The savagery rears its head on Arabian Heights: this is the perfect combination of Whigs trademarks, a funky as shit bassline, a guitar shredding all hell out of everything around it and Dulli yelling, ‘Don’t you come with me'; we can’t help ourselves, Greg! The tempo switches again for Demon in Profile which recalls Gentlemen’s My Curse. Ah, they make a beautiful noise.
It was clear when the Whigs reformed and served up 2014's Do to the Beast that they weren't looking to dine on former glories. Do to the Beast could easily have been a Gutter Twins project (Dulli’s Afghan Whigs’ hiatus band as they will now forever be known), but In Spades is all Whigs. Dulli has never sounded better. If you ever loved the Whigs you will love this.
Listen to: Arabian Heights, Toy Automatic, Into the Floor
Buy The Afghan Whigs - In Spades on LP/CD/Cassette tape from Norman Records