After having spent the last few years as one half of The Gutter Twins (with Mark Lanegan), Greg Dulli has returned to leading The Twilight Singers, his bread and butter since his old band, alternative masters The Afghan Whigs, disbanded in the late 90s. Dynamite Steps, the band’s fifth album, ends their longest run of years without a release (five) after a prolific run of four albums in six years at the start of the millennium. If anything has changed in those five years it’s the growth in Dulli’s standing as an American classic, as a revered and respected rock n’ roll icon, and in turn that has enriched the efforts of his Twilight collective, who deliver their darkest, most emotional album to date. Thick with Dulli’s gruff but evocative voice over top a sweeping soundscape that runs soulful, sexy, serious, and stellar, Dynamite Steps is indie noir of the highest order, a flickering flame of hope at the end of a long, dirty, hopeless tunnel. Every single one of the songs on this album breathe with a mesmerizing profundity and while its hard to pull out highlights, “Last Night in Town,” “On the Corner,” “Blackbird and the Fox” (featuring Ani DiFranco), “Never Seen No Devil,” and the title track ought to find room in Dulli’s ever growing catalog of brilliance, and will make you take to the city streets in the dead of night to look for meaning in its dimmest lights.
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan Hawk
Vanguard Records
Yeah, okay, so the folksy, sultry tunes of Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan don’t exactly fall in with the rank and file of doom, metal, and stoner rock that you usually find around here, but the fact of the matter is — if you don’t know this already — Lanegan is a bad-ass, whiskey-voiced deity in the Broken Beard universe. The guy could put out a polka record and I’d still tell you about it because everything he touches (Screaming Trees, The Gutter Twins, Soulsavers, etc.) turns to pure grit, which is what makes his collaborations with Isobel Campbell so great. She, former member of indie pop band Belle & Sebastian, is innocence incarnate, the Scottish girl-next-door with the porcelain voice, and he is the brooding American desperado at the end of the bar. Put ‘em together and you get an old suitcase full of black and white photographs, tear-stained love letters, faded memories, long distance calls from a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, and wordless nights on a porch swing. Hawk, their third album together, is a whole barn full o’ jukebox flare, rustling up a roving range of country-folk, blues, soul, gospel, and Americana, calling to mind the eras and auras of Cash and Carter, Dylan and Baez. Campell’s songwriting on Hawk is utterly moving, playing emotion better than any instrument on the album, and is at once light, languid, deep, and desolate. To help the mood along, the album also offers a few Townes Van Zandt covers and a couple of appearances by Willy Mason. But, as always, this is the Campbell and Lanegan show, which continues to be the strangest, most beautiful show on earth.
Check out the video for “You Won’t Le Me Down Again” from Hawk!
This one was a long time coming, almost four years in fact, and it blew every expectation I had right out of the water. After releasing their debut, Hello Master, Priestess was rolling quietly along until everything exploded; they signed to a major label, toured with some of the biggest bands in the biz, received increased radio airplay, and lent songs to smash hit video games. Fame, however, didn’t change them. In fact, they steered so clear of a commercial sound on Prior to the Fire that their label wouldn’t put it out. So that delayed things a bit, but Priestess finally found another way to release the album and despite the brilliance and success of Hello Master, there’s no doubt that Prior to the Fire is the album Priestess had always wanted to make. Stoner rock, progressive rock, classic rock, heavy metal…it’s all riffs and it’s all here in full bearded surround sound glory. And it’s completely perfect. This is my band, no doubt about it.
The Twilight Singers
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
#6 Priestess – Prior to the Fire