The Afghan Whigs @ O2 ABC, 27 May
In defence of the Afghan Whigs, Cup Final day and another big rock gig at the Hydro (Kiss, in this instance) make for tough competition, but even so the O2 ABC is barely half full when they take the stage at half past eight. Greg Dulli enters alone, to the piped in choir and strings of new album In Spades opener Birdland. Stalking the stage and wailing into a mic held above his head, he opens the show with a fantastic impression of an admittedly talented drunk doing Tom Jones at a karaoke night.
Normality, however – repetitive, monotonous, dreary normality – is quickly established when his bandmates shuffle onstage and join Dulli after this surreal introduction. New song Arabian Heights is powered by a locked riff and driving drums, and sets the tone for the unsubtle, sub-stadium anthem rock the band are known for. With three guitarists, a bassist, a drummer and a front man who sometimes switches his guitar for a piano, the Afghan Whigs are archetypal of the straightforward rawk music which grew up around and after the grunge scene. But like all their contemporaries, their work is robbed of the incisive power and force of its grunge parents. The Afghan Whigs are diluted, a homeopathic Soundgarden.
Matamoros sums up their tired, self-parodic lyricism. 'Now that the blood has begun/I'd like to see how it's done/Behind my back, up to my face/Let's take the money and run.' These are literally nonsensical phrases which read like they were created by a human experiment who was only ever allowed to listen to the Foo Fighters and the post-match interviews of Premier League footballers. 'Come a little closer, baby, I only want to try to be your friend,' Dulli sings on Honky’s Ladder, exposing himself as yet another Man With A Guitar who loves power chords, meaningless lyrics about masculinity, and appearing vaguely like the sort of man girls warn other girls about at parties.
A Pleasure Club cover in honour of cancer stricken bandmate Dave Rosser is a nice moment, but then it’s straight back to the same old chords and the same old platitudes. At one point Dulli even screams “I love this city,” at a half-full room of middle-aged couples who’ve spent the last hour sincerely but politely tapping their feet to the music.
The crowd tonight do genuinely enjoy the show. They are almost uniformly couples in their late thirties and forties who liked this sort of thing when they were younger, and still do now. The Afghan Whigs sing dramatic songs about road trips listened to exclusively by people on the school run. They end their set with power ballad Lost in the Woods (of course they end with a power ballad) and they finish having entertained their crowd. But nonetheless The Afghan Whigs are nothing more than an obvious, derivative, stale, turgid mess.