Review: Random Desire, by Greg Dulli

The new Greg Dulli solo album is the creative culmination of a 30-plus year career.

FFO: Greg Dulli, Greg Dulli, and Greg Dulli

Random Desire is billed as Greg Dulli’s first solo project. Even if you ignore the fact that Dulli already had a solo debut in 2005 (possibly a technically , since it was released as quote Greg Dulli’s Amber Headlights end quote), Dulli’s bands—the Afghan Whigs, the Gutter Twins, and the Twilight Singers—were always driven by his singular creative vision. His bandmates played important roles, but they were always in service to whatever muse Dulli was following at the time. If Dulli is fronting a band, it’s going to sound like his project, period.

After “reuniting”* the Afghan Whigs in 2011 and releasing two albums (2014’s good Do to the Beast and 2017’s excellent In Spades), Dulli found himself in need of a creative outlet as the band again went on hiatus. Random Desire is that outlet; inspired by Prince, Todd Rundgren, and other one-man-bands, Dulli wrote, played, and recorded the whole album himself (save for some guest spots from his pals). While there’s a slapdash quality here as a result, the album is still the most diverse release in Dulli’s career, revisiting almost every creative detour he’s taken while venturing down the occasional new path.

*more like adding an original Whig member to the Twilight Singers line-up

One of the most fascinating things about Dulli’s creative output over the years is that as his songwriting accumulated new wrinkles, he’d take those elements to his next project and continue building. So while the Whigs started off as a loud college rock bar band with serious ’60s R&B/soul undertones, they kept expending, ladling in more and more nuances. And then the Twilight Singers added a dollop of electronica and sunny indie rock. And the Gutter Twins folded in some late ’80s Nick Cave vibes. Random Desire keeps with this trend, as all of these elements swirl and slosh around. Some songs, like the glorious “The Tide,” revisit touchstone points (in this case, Black Love-era Afghan Whigs, with a huge upswell of guitars, piano, and Dulli’s howl). Other tunes try some new tricks, like opener “Pantomima”—it’s maybe the single most joyous-sounding thing Dulli has released. And “Scorpio” slinks along with a sexy vibe that’s carried by a trip-hop backbeat and some impressively syncopated verse vocals from Dulli.

If Random Desire suffers, it’s mainly from the limitations of keeping this to a one-man affair. I’ve always found Dulli an underappreciated musician, a true jack of all trades whose musicianship was always eclipsed by his huge on-stage persona. But while a more-than-capable multi-instrumentalist, Dulli’s playing never strays far from what he’s done before. The same can’t be said for his vocal performance—Dulli’s raspy yowl aims for some sultry low notes that are far out of his range. It’s endearing, but still a bad fit for the album. And it’s also not helped by the thin-sounding production; Dulli might’ve been shooting for this early Prince aesthetic, but it doesn’t mesh well with the anthemic swells that frequent his songs.

Random Desire is also the most lyrically diverse of Dulli’s career. Dulli’s songs have always been about the brooding and self-destruction that comes with passion. But here, he seems to take a step back and look at the sadness, joy, and peace that comes from relationships (or, like in the album’s standout “Marry Me,” broken relationships). It’s still Dulli, but this is the most mature he’s ever sounded (or, his persona has sounded, if there’s any actual difference between the two).

Clocking in at a mere 37 minutes, Random Desire covers a lot of ground in a little time. Even with its limitations, the it’s the most true sounding recording Greg Dulli has ever released. Maybe that’s why it’s being billed as his first solo album.

Our Rating: 7.9 (Stand Out)

Random Desire is out now on Royal Cream/BMG.

Review: The Coming Collapse, by Foxhall Stacks

Washington D.C. hardcore veterans’ power pop debut spins on our society’s collapse

FFO: Material Issue, early Fountains of Wayne, The Smithereens

Despite being a perennial punching bag in some corners of music journalism, power pop lives on. The earliest power pop bands took British Invasion melodic sensibilities and turned it up, pairing big hooks with self-deprecating longing. Each successive generation of power pop musicians added a new wrinkle or two while simultaneously worshiping at the Altar of Power Pop Past. At this point, power pop, as a form of pop rock, is an earworm ouroboros. Power pop fans (and I am among that number) are fine with this; we just want the hooks to keep coming. Keep ’em coming. Please.

The Coming Collapse, Foxhall Stacks’s first full-length release, is breezy enough and certainly catchy enough to pass muster for most power pop devotees. All of the right elements are here: the overdriven choruses are catchy (“Turntable Exiles,” “Rough Sailors”); the swarm of handclaps and punchy harmony vocals ever-present (“Do It Yesterday”); the acoustic tune is here (“Worried”); so is the punk-ish number (“The Old Me”); oh, and there’s the quasi-psychadelic song (“Failure”); and so on. The Coming Collapse follows the standard power pop template nicely, specifically the late-’80s/early-’90s alternative rock wave (think the Posies, Material Issue, and so on). but the band’s genesis is a little more surprising than the usual mopey-Anglophile-English-major-with-guitar origin story. The band’s members all have impressive resumes, especially in the indelible Washington D.C. hardcore punk and post-hardcore scene. (Between the four: Minor Threat, Government Issue, Wool, Jawbox, Burning Airlines, Bad Religion, Dag Nasty, Velocity Girl, and High Back Chairs, just to name a few.) But a bunch of aging (gracefully!) punks playing catchy guitar pop isn’t that odd, in the grand scheme of things—there’s a lot of overlap with the “punk” and “power pop” Venn diagram sets, when you get down to it.

The thing that breaks the mold here is that The Coming Collapse unrepentantly deals with the ravages of age, both individually and as a society, more than almost any other power pop record I can think of. That sounds more highfalutin than it actually is—the lyrics are often a weak point of the album, with a number of clunky rhyme pairings littering the tunes. The band isn’t trying to pretend they’re decades younger than they are, though, a problem with some legacy power pop acts. Instead, frontman Bill Barbot lets the existential dread seep into the grooves of the record—when you’re worrying about the fabric of your society unraveling, who has time to fret over whether that cute person at the amusement park notices you or not?

While the album leans heavily into songs that skirt around mid-tempo, the rhythm section keeps things moving. Pete Moffett has always been a pocket monster on the kit (see his outstanding with J. Robbins’s post-Jawbox outfit, Burning Airlines, for an example), and that doesn’t change here; he and bassist Brian Baker lock into a groove from the opening lines of “The Reckoning” and maintain it for the next 40 minutes. Jim Spellman’s lead guitar lines provide a nice counterpoint to Barbot’s occasionally angular rhythm guitar parts; while the two don’t have the instrumental chemistry that Barbot had with J. Robbins on the later Jawbox releases, there’s a comfortable vibe on the songs on The Coming Collapse. These are four scene veterans having fun together, and it shows.

Saying The Coming Collapse is “solid” could be interpreted as a backhanded compliment. It’s not. The Coming Collapse is a well-made, tuneful album with little in the way of filler. This last point alone makes it a power pop rarity. But, aside from a handful of excellent songs (“Turntable Exiles,” “Law of Averages,” and “Top of the Pops” really are fantastic tunes), the album is, well, solid. And it doesn’t really need to be anything more, really. Sometimes, singing along to something that’s good enough with your fellow travelers as the world collapses is enough.

Our Rating: 7.7 (Stand Out)

The Coming Collapse is out now on Snappy Little Fingers Quality Audio Recordings.

Review: Pink Haze by Exnations

For fans of: The Cure, Ra Ra Riot, Pale Waves, Phil Collins, Wildlife, The Killers

Exnations is shrouded in a certain enigma, the kind that conjures questions like “How is this band not huge already?” Though the Brooklyn trio’s discography consists of two EPs (the first released in 2018), the craftsmanship on Exnations’ songs has no trace of a dilettante mindset. “Knife”, a standalone single, may very well be my favorite song of any band released this year. So, it’s a complete mystery how, with ready access to the NY market, Exnations is still largely unknown.

Thankfully, that hasn’t deterred the band in the slightest from simply making good art – whether songs or their seemingly-endless stream of music videos. Exnations might be best described as indie-pop, and it’s an accurate way to classify their artistic approach. The masses should like them, but they aren’t living for the dopamine rush of social media engagement. They’ve embraced the freedom of the DIY scene.

Pink Haze, the group’s latest EP, is certainly the pinnacle of their work to date. It’s moody, nostalgic, somber, catchy, and so much more. It’s a reflection of ephemera, akin to the Japanese expression mono no aware. It’s an awareness that beauty and pain are often inseparable in the dilation of time.

Ultimately, there’s a pervasive cinematic vibe here as well. Even if you have seen Exnations’ slew of videos, it’s hard not to imagine other scenarios paired with the six tracks on the EP. 80s prom. Standing on a rainy city street at night. Spending your anniversary alone. Hanging out at an amusement park. The group carefully balance youthful longing with the pain of loss. The universal nature of these feelings, along with the actual compositions, make it easy for these songs to feel like soundtrack to a plurality of life circumstances.

Exnations may have presented a strong EP to the heart, but they didn’t neglect the mind by any stretch. The trio have found a way to craft dense songs that still translate well live. Reverberating guitar, shimmering synths, prominent bass, and tight drumming are the quintessential core of the band’s sound, paired with frontman Sal Mastrocola’s soothing vocals for a sound that is dynamic but never too aggressive. Needless to say, the songs are carefully composed and feel cohesive lined back to back. The lyrics are personal, juggling themes of love, loss, loneliness, joy, and moving forward.

“John Hughes Movie Soundtrack” is perhaps the highlight track of the album. It’s one of the faster tracks, and contributions from all three members are excellent. Taylor Hughes’ drumming is exemplary; John O’Neill’s bass parts are punchy; Sal Mastrocola’s riffs are catchy. It’s a great starting point for new listeners.

Other tracks still hold their own, though. “Tether” is a strong opener and sets the emotional tone of the EP. “Slow Erosion” is a slower track and showcases the band’s use of negative space. “Dreaming Still” is a hazy ballad outro. The emotional context of the album is only strengthened by their ability to change page. It’s akin to driving on a city street after spending hours on the highway, where you need an extra degree of awareness to adjust to the speed limit. The slower songs here manage to demand even more attention before of how the EP is laid out, and that makes “Dreaming Still” an especially-devastating track from an emotional perspective.

Pink Haze is strewn with intelligent retro-pop with equal shades of cinematic clout and dance floor sensibility. It’s a versatile album that is primed to be one of the highlights of 2019.

Our Rating: 8.0 (Best New Music)

Review: Goodnight Paradise by Graveyard Club

FFO: The Cure, Frank Sinatra, nostalgia, ghost stories

There are some inescapable connotations that accompany a band whose name is Graveyard Club and whose song titles include “Witchcraft” and “Ouija”. But Graveyard Club is certainly a band that thrives off layers. Moving past the titles, you’ll find vintage-flavored album art, zany music videos with copious amounts of lemons, and a music flavor that rides the fine line between classic crooners and new wave classics. There is certainly nothing lifeless about what this band has to offer.

Goodnight Paradise is the group’s latest offering, serving as their third long-player to date. The crew had no trace of sophomore slump on its 2016 predecessor, Cellar Door, and fans have been waiting eagerly to see how Graveyard Club would follow up. “Ouija” dropped as a single in 2017, but it wasn’t until the end of this June that the band served up a proper release.

If you’ve ever had sibling just a few years older than you, you might have run into the uncomfortable moment where your teachers compare you to your siblings – if not overtly, at least in action and expectation (and maybe to your parents behind your back). Reviewing Goodnight Paradise feels a lot like being in the position of a teacher with younger sibling syndrome – it’s challenging to see it as a unique work with its own strengths when the natural inclination is to see it as a simple addition to the monument that was Cellar Door.

Needless to say, Goodnight Paradise is a decidedly a different album. There are, to some degree, fewer huge hooks (though it’d be remiss to say that an album’s impact is entirely dependent on its level of instant gratification). Musically, the tone is still vibrant – though the subject matter of the lyrics is a bit more intense this time around. The group have not labeled it a concept album, but there’s something about the use of names in the song titles that gives a certain sense of unity.

Graveyard Club do well to play into themes of loss and nostalgia with their signature blend of synth pop. Korg Minilogue meets sample pad meets pedalboard heaven for a sound that is more dreamy than spooky. Indeed, even when Graveyard Club tread through dark waters, they do so with wide-mouthed grins.

Even the lyrics obfuscate their dark undertones with proper cadence and poetry. It’s not a huge surprise for a band that was in part united by their love of fiction. It’s hard at times to discern to which degree the lyrics on Goodnight Paradise are biographical compared to which play out like short stories, but in the end, it arguably doesn’t matter. Graveyard Club is content to rest in a bit of mystery for the sake of art.

Even though Goodnight Paradise lacks some of the oomph of Cellar Door, that’s not to say it still isn’t peppered with captivating moments. The opening combo of “Witchcraft” (the album’s first single with accompanying music video), “Red Roses”, and “William” (another single) serves to set the listener up with some lofty expectations. “William” in particular seems reminiscent of Cellar Door‘s title track with its staccato synth lead. The next two singles come in as tracks 5 and 6. “It Hurts” is quite possibly the strongest song the group has released to date. Maybe the repetition of how “it hurts” connects with me on an oddly personal level (okay, it definitely does) “Finally Found” isn’t quite as strong, but it’s a hazy, danceable track that still leaves a good impression.

This is when things start to slow down quite a bit. The next high-energy track is a quarter of the album later (“Deathproof”), and the group have exhausted all of their singles at this point which makes Goodnight Paradise feel front-heavy. It’s not that the rest of the tracks are bad, but in some manner or another, they feel scaled back. Maybe there’s no big chorus or drums are in short supply; ultimately, several tracks feel like they’re missing something. Graveyard Club doesn’t feel like two separate bands, but they’ve got two types of songs. And it’s a bit hard to reconcile the differences in the context of an album, especially with how everything is arranged.

I’d be very curious to see the album broken into two EPs: “Witchcraft”, “Red Roses”, “William”, “Finally Found”, “It Hurts”, and “Deathproof” on one disk with the remaining songs on another EP. As a whole, the album seems to do a bit of goal-posting, setting an expectation for a certain type of sound before burning through all the hits and slowing pace abruptly.

Even so, there’s definitely lyrical cohesion in place. There are heavy themes of loss, coping with grief, death of friends and family, and the process of moving forward. It’s not an album that claims to have the answers but instead romances the authenticity of the questions it asks – the kinds of topics that you won’t find around a dinner table but that still haunt most of us. For this reason, it would be wrong to break apart the album. However, we’re left with an experience that seems to drift between two different worlds. Maybe that’s exactly what Graveyard Club wants – for us to wrestle with tension.

Category: Post Punk/ New Wave