Suck My Lozenge: LaRM day 6 (Afghan Whigs)

So, it's Afghan Whigs day and we start with Up In It (1990), which is a brilliantly ragged dose of solid misanthropy. It's still a bit in thrall to the scrappier end of US college rock, and the real influence of Stax-style soul music is still yet to really show up (in the most peculiar and indie-rock way) in Greg Dulli's writing. All the parts that he would build on over the rest of his career are here in their basic constituency though, the brutal lyrical approach to relationships, the weirdly straining guitar lines, and the four minute rock song as epic musical and psychological drama. The first proper allusion to the soul influence on Dulli comes with the 'My World is Empty Without You' 12" (1992). In fact the various Stax and Motown covers that the Afghan Whigs made over the next couple of years are some of the most remarkable stuff they recorded.

It all starts properly coming together with Congregation (1992). Soul and funk sit easily behind the more obvious Seattle rock sound of the band, giving the songs a remarkable depth and a totally unique take on what was turning into the "grunge" sound. The Afghan Whigs were so far ahead of their contemporaries that a comparison between Congregation and Nevermind clearly proves. The difference I suppose is that where Cobain saw being in a band as a way of showing off and shouting about himself, Dulli absolutely loves music, studies it, and understands it. Then we've got the 'Turn on the Water' 12", which has a couple of forgettable B-sides, followed by the astounding Uptown Avondale EP which has some of the greatest soul and R&B cover versions ever recorded (by a college rock act anyway...) and the intense, creepy version of 'Band of Gold' demonstrates just how successfully they managed to fuse the two disparate styles of music.

The Uptown Avondale EP hinted to the highlight of the Whigs career which came with 1993's Gentlemen. For my money this is easily the greatest record to come out of the Sub-Pop/grunge scene. Again, while Sonic Youth were still tinkering and Nirvana sitting about staring at their navels, the Afghan Whigs were working on making their sound bigger and fleshing out the R&B elements, such that Gentlemen is simultaneously the most lyrically disturbing examination of the masculine sexual ego and the grooviest record that Sub Pop ever released. It's a record of extraordinary depth and listening to it is like reading an incredibly intense novel, completely absorbing and utterly thrilling. It's great. It was bookended by the 'Gentlemen' single which has a couple of fine covers ('Dark End of the Street' and the Ass Ponys 'Mr Superlove' which is a great song in its own right), and the 'Debonair' and 'What Jail is Like' singles, which also have some decent cover versions (including one of Scrawl's 'Ready'. Scrawl will come up later, but it's worth mentioning that Scrawl's Marcy Mays sings lead on the most emotionally gruelling song from Gentlemen, 'My Curse').

A couple of years off gave Dulli the opportunity to spend some time in New Orleans and to loosen up both the sound of the band and his songwriting, such that there although the thematic darkness remains intact in 1996's Black Love, the sound is less dense and abrasive and a really melodic sense underpins the songs this time round (the influence of Fleetwood Mac's cocaine fuelled 'California trilogy' is pretty apparent). The album was preceded by the 'Honky's Ladder' single, which has a great cover of TLC's 'Creep'. There are some great songs but for me Black Love is a bit of a down note before the real uplift of the Whigs' final album 1965 (1998), in which Dulli seems to have completely cut loose the dense musical darkness and left the lyrics to do the dirty talking, while the tunes rise up in, dare I say it, a "funky groove". It's an eclectic album but it's like a party mix for the end of a career, covering most of the moods that the Whigs had gone through over the previous ten years, but on the whole keeping the mood right up. It was the end for the Afghan Whigs, but not for Dulli and there will be lots more to come from him when we get to T.