Two years ago, I got to spend two hours just below Greg Dulli’s nose, when the Afghan Whigs reunited and played their first West Coast gig in thirteen years at Bootsy Bellows on the Sunset Strip, and I didn’t complain a bit! They were supposed to reconnect for a few shows but it seems that they are truly back again with a new album ‘Do to the Beast’ set to be released mid April via Sub pop.
The band has shared their first track ‘Algiers’ and the video, which has nothing to do with the Arabic city, shows Dulli as the central character arriving in a white Limo in a town which seems to be in the middle of nowhere. The slowly spreading song ballads Dulli’s falsetto around layered guitars, crying and ferocious solos, whiplashes and some real violence, so that the video is built like a mini spaghetti western around the eternal theme of revenge. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Dulli talked about the conception of the song: ‘I wrote that song a year ago—during Mardi Gras last year. Algiers is on the west bank, across the river from New Orleans. Dave, one of the guitar players, lives over there and has a studio. I give things working titles and sometimes I never change the title, and because we recorded in Algiers it became ‘Algiers’.’
Still this cowboy setting looks nothing like New Orleans, but Dulli also explained that the video was inspired by a famous Leone’s movie: ‘The video is an homage to ‘High Plains Drifter’. When I finished the song, I thought to myself, ‘This song kind of sounds like a spaghetti western.’ It has that Sergio Leone vibe to it. Of the Man With No Name films that Clint Eastwood did with Leone, High Plains Drifter was always a favorite of mine, especially for the revenge angle that it explored. When you see it, it’s very clear who we’re saluting.’ And aren’t all the best movies about revenge anyway? Just ask Tarantino.
The song also reminds me about the theme song for this new HBO series, ‘True Detective’, which has a vague Italian western vibe, and is actually the 2003 song ‘ Far From Any Road’ by the Handsome Family: it’s basically the same atmosphere, just switch Brett Sparks’ dark baritone for Greg Dulli’ falsetto. But it’s funny and impressive how Dulli can come up with such a badass attitude while adopting this high-pitched voice, this is a complete contrast and actually one of the strengths of the tune. ‘On that song, I remember when I started singing it, ‘ he explained, ‘I was imagining Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Eric Carmen—those were the three lines that popped into my head. There are echoes of each of them in there. I like to try different things, and I got to be a character a little bit inside the song. I said, ‘I’m gonna croon this one’, so croon I did.’ Indeed, listen to the song below and check out the Afghan Whigs tour date, with, of course, a Coachella stop:
Tracklist for ‘Do to the Beast’:
01 Parked Outside
02 Matamoros
03 It Kills
04 Algiers
05 Lost in the Woods
06 The Lottery
07 Can Rova
08 Royal Cream
09 I Am Fire
10 These Sticks
Tour dates:
04-10 Pioneertown, CA – Pappy & Harriet’s
04-11 Indio, CA – Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival
04-14 Portland, OR – Doug Fir
04-15 Seattle, WA – Showbox Market
04-17 San Francisco, CA – Slim’s
04-18 Indio, CA – Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival
05-15 Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Bowl
05-16 Boston, MA – Paradise
05-17 Baltimore, MD – Otto Bar
