Sometime during the last dozen years, or after the Afghan Whigs consecrated their second iteration with 2014’s Do to the Beast, Greg Dulli seems to have realized his band’s sound was no longer shocking. A quarter-century earlier, the Cincinnatians were one of the first non-Seattle bands signed to Sub Pop, catalyzing waves of next-Nirvana hubbub. But they were always the American cousins of the Bad Seeds, pulling, to paraphrase Dulli from a 1993 interview, the guts out of soul to make bludgeoning, romantic, and depraved rock ’n’ roll. They didn’t just cover the Supremes and Al Green on 1992’s Uptown Avondale; they ripped those sacrosanct songs apart to build something unholy. But you can find a little or a lot of soul beneath the big canopy of indie rock these days, while covers that cross once-formidable genre or racial boundaries are de rigueur, no longer surprising or subversive. (The Whigs reunited, after all, partly because Usher loved them, long after such an idea stopped seeming completely absurd.) After the reunion afterglow fades, then, how does a band like the Whigs—such an outlier on their 1993 major-label debut, Gentlemen, far less so now—find new ground?
The answer feels too obvious to say, but here it is, anyway: songs. On 2022’s remarkable How Do You Burn?, the Whigs pushed aside notions of who they had been and should be to exaggerate unexpected parts of their past and become something not entirely different but at least distinct. There was gothic dance-punk and baroque acoustic rock, wall-of-sound psychedelia and full-on soul, threaded together by a singer who still seemed at the precipice of oblivion or enlightenment. Soft Control—the fourth album of the band’s second act, but the first to fully proclaim they’re still not done learning—elaborates on that wide-open approach. Yes, the first two tracks reflect vintage Whigs, from the tripwire electric guitars to the ghoulish background vocals. But most of these songs explore the relatively unexplored, like the unabashed rock balladry of “Memphis, Texas” or the anthemic aspirations of “Loose Talk.” These songs are often about what comes next for Dulli, a newly minted sexagenarian who once delighted in his role as a sexual deviant; he wants them to sound that way, too.
No score yet, be the first to add.
To that end, “Duvateen” is immediately one of the most affecting numbers of the Whigs’ long run. “Mercifully I’m becoming what I feel,” Dulli opens, his age-honest rasp rising over the sort of piano that might lead an old Vanessa Carlton hit, “Walking in circles on the color wheel.” This is a confession about stepping away from the things you love and that may kill you—a cigarette, a cursed lover—but being real about missing it, too. That is, it’s a song about becoming an adult, or deciding, as Dulli repeats in the coda while his voice steadily ascends, “All because of me/What’s it going to be?” That search for self-definition also frames “Mariah Luster,” where Dulli approaches a campfire croon over acoustic guitars and birdsong samples. “Hypocrites are everywhere/Lovers playing solitaire,” he sings. “I cop what I feel.” That’s the perfect verb here, its double-meaning serving notice that these songs are not just Dulli’s admissions but also his ways of moving forward. He’s making what he wants, copping something new instead of simply capitulating to the past.
