The Afghan Whigs' Gentlemen (2008)

This entry by Bob Gendron in the 33-1/3 series struck me as competent nearly to a fault. Very well written, with lots of rock critic pizzazz and a familiar structure—about one-third on recording the album, one-third critical riffing track by track, and one-third general history, context, and other details. It even has some obligatory strange excesses, such as an unexpected rant about Linda Ronstadt. It was underwhelming, but so were the revisits to the album under consideration, at least at first. That surprised me a little, but eventually I found my connection to Gentlemen again, an honest, harrowing foray into the relationship wars, full of drama and thrumming anxiety. Despite recording for the Sub Pop label for a time (Gentlemen is the band's major label debut on Elektra), the Afghan Whigs never fit the grunge label well. It's true that it is rooted in loud electric guitars, but singer/songwriter/main dude Greg Dulli wrote songs that also drew on midcentury soul music for a lot of its power and polish, and his themes are complex and mature (even when describing someone who is immature). The Afghan Whigs were also a great live act I saw a few times in the early and mid-'90s. In some ways I think Gendron's competence here is evidence Gentlemen might have required something more unconventional. Or maybe it is more an album purely of its times. Or maybe I overrated the album once, or misperceived it. But no disrespect intended to Gendron just because he stayed within the lines and took a familiar route in the series for his book. I'm not even sure how to categorize the Afghan Whigs at this point, let alone evaluate. I see that Robert Christgau gave this album an A-, but didn't have very much illuminating to say beyond the obvious. Gendron does have approximately one suitcase full of good details here. More than half of Dulli's vocals were recorded in a single long night, for example, involving cocaine and a woman he met just that day. That sounds about right, both for Dulli's reputation and for his doomy charismatic stage presence. It's also interesting (after all these years) to find out how scattered some of these bands have become. One of the Whigs ended up in Minneapolis, and Dulli spent some time living in "Washington state," which I take to mean somewhere not Seattle. They were all from Cincinnati originally. One or more of them might still be there, maybe even Dulli. Album and book together are a worthy pair for fans.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.