The Twilight Singers- "Powder Burns"

So I'd never heard of this band until last week....... I'm really not sure how that is.... Usually my ears perk up at the mention of a familiar name branching into a side project. When I hear about these types of things I can sort of instantly tell if this new union is something worth my time or if it's shite..... Case in point the recent assemblage of James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins), Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick), Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne), And Taylor Hanson (Hanson!) forming up to create Tinted Windows. At first it seems kind of unique and kinda cool sounding, I mean James Iha! Gotta be good, right? But then you hear it (I caught a clip of it on the radio the other night), and you sometimes find out otherwise.....

So when I heard the slow burner start of "There's Been An Accident" featured during one of the segments of the movie Choke last week, I googled it afterwards and came up with the name Greg Dulli. Greg Dulli was always "That guy from the Afghan Whigs" to me ever since I saw his name included in the notes of a Foo Fighters album years back. I always had a periphery of the Afghan Whigs... Saw a couple of videos back in the day of there's, but kinda forgot about them.....So I figured I would give it a shot.

So I buy this album and it turns out to be pretty good. There's definitely some cheesy aspects to some of it, such as the almost stripclubesque (?) "My Time (Has Come)", but the urgency of Dulli's voice pushes the songs along and makes the twist up nicely. The band's lineup apparently rotates with every album and subsequent tour. The members are made up of Dulli's friends from other bands ( I didn't know existed either..) such as Howlin' Maggie and Satchel. The result is an album full of big, sludgy melodies and deep hooks. When Dulli sings ".... slow down, lean in, call up that feeling..." on "Candy Cane Crawl", it gives you one of those emotional bends not totally unlike one of Elbow's best.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes less familiar stuff really is worth your while.

Now to find out who everyone else in the band is.