Wednesday 14 August 2019

Greg Dulli Covers



When Greg Dulli returned to Louisville after the extensive and gruelling touring on the back of the Congregation album, he found that things had changed in his absence. His live in girlfriend confessed to him that while he was away she had "hooked up" with someone else and although Dulli had been doing the dirty on her more than a few times when on tour he could not accept that somebody could do the same to him. He upped and moved home to Cincinnati to lick his wounds and do some soul searching to a soundtrack of Blood On The Tracks, Here My Dear and Astral Weeks. The record however that got the most turntable time turned out to be the flip side of an R&B top three hit Turn Back The Hands Of Time from 1970, The pleading, grovelling, "please take me back" plea for forgiveness "I Keep Coming Back" struck a chord with Dulli.

A lot of Dulli's feelings from this time of reflection shaped the subject matter and lyrics of the Whigs next album, Gentleman and so covering the track that he had played over and over during the downtime in Cincinnati was probably an obvious choice and what a cover it is, the emotion that Dulli puts into his rendition of this track would have you thinking that these must be his own words penned from deep within, it wasn't until after the third or fourth time of listening and on getting round to perusing the sleeve notes that I realised that this was a cover not being acquainted with the original at that point. On a couple of occasions during the song the singer nearly goes totally out of tune but manages to pull it back from the brink just as you think "oh no" which makes this one of my absolute favourite covers and a track would that would have ended a few compilation tapes if it had been around back in the day when I tried to woo members of the opposite sex with the aid of what I believed to be my excellent taste in music,

The Afghan Whigs - I Keep Coming Back

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