Saturday 10 January 2009

Afghan Whigs




The whole Grunge thing passed me by, I has too busy having fun and dancing to the kind of music that you will find over at Acid Ted to be bothered by miserable guitar music. Over the years I have tried to get into it as the better half loves Nirvana but it just doesn't work for me, it leaves me cold.

I had always considered the Afghan Whigs to be a grunge band so had never really listened to their music until a few years ago when I discovered KEXP Seattle on the net while bored at work. The morning show hosted by Jon Richards plays a diverse mix of music and is responsible for putting me onto quite a few bands. Every so often he would drop a track by the Afghan Whigs and I decided that they needed further investigation. What I found was not what I would term grunge but a rock band with a really soulful element, indeed of the many covers Dulli has recorded a large proportion are of soul songs.

Their frontman Greg Dulli is better known these days for his latest incarnation as The Twilight Singers and collaboration with Mark Lanegan as the Gutter Twins. The first track here is a cover of an Ass Pony's song who were closely associated with the Whigs at the time. The second is one of the many standout tracks from their final album 1965, if you don't own anything by this band I suggest starting with this album.

Afghan Whigs - Mr Superlove

Afghan Whigs - 66

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi mate, and greetings from NZ. Afghan Whigs were a great band, their Sub-Pop stuff predates grunge by a few years and, you are right, Dulli has a great soul voice. I can only recommend their covers of "Creep", by TLC and "Nighttime", by Big Star.

Having my first look at your blog, after you comment at Phil Spector's, so keep up the grat work..

drew said...

Hi Pablo, thanks for dropping by, have seen the twilight singers a handful of times now but never got to see the whigs live unfortunately, i could probably fill a couple of wweeks of posts with Dulli's covers

Anonymous said...

Not strictly Grunge but have you got any Silverfish ?