The Brag

Afghan Whigs
Unbreakable
By Benjamin Cooper

When you’ve ridden rough-shod over more than two decades of alternative music, there are particular assumptions that come with curating your own festival. But Greg Dulli of the  iconic Afghan Whigs is not in the slightest bit interested in grandstanding about his role in September’s All Tomorrow’s Parties in New Jersey. It will be only the second time that his band has performed in America since reforming last year, but the frontman is focused on the rest of the bill. “The day we’re curating is still a work in progress,” he admits down the line from Los Angeles. “But we’re going to have some tight stuff. We’ve got everything from Louis CK to Jose Gonzalez – but I’m really looking forward to Charles Bradley. My friend tour-managed him last year and invited me to one of his shows. I was blown away by his story, the voice, and just his humility.”

Without wanting to engage in an overt circle jerk, I’m interested to know what the frontman of such a seminal band took away from witnessing Bradley’s heady brews of funk and soul? “First up, I have to point out that you just used the word ‘seminal’ shortly after you said ‘circle jerk’. I mean, that was the same sentence and all!” Dulli laughs. “I think there’s your article title right there ‘Afghan Whigs: Seminal Circle Jerks’… But seriously, when I see a guy like Charles Bradley I’m not watching his moves so much as I’m feeling what he’s about. I don’t know Charles personally all that well, but there seems to be something in how he has transcended his struggles. He has finally achieved the acclaim that eluded him for so long – that’s a rare thing.”

Acclaim certainly did not elude Dulli’s band throughout the 1990s; their post-punk and soul-inflected releases through Seattle stable Sub Pop Records gathered them a swathe of fans across America and Europe. And any lingering doubts about their talent were flung aside when the band returned to performing after a decade-long hiatus, in a sold-out show this May at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. “It was a hell of a night,” Dulli says. “I have really never stopped performing, so I wasn’t worried about how the show was going to go. We’ve all kept busy; I’ve spent a lot of time working with Mark [Lanegan, ex-Kyuss and Queens Of The Stone Age] in The Gutter Twins, or recording various projects. But after the show, Jonathan [Poleman, Sub Pop founder] came up to us and said, ‘I’ve got to be honest, man: I always thought you were a great band, but I cannot believe that you are all playing so incredibly.’ That was really cool because he’s known about this stuff from the very start, and that kind of validation is nice.”

The positive reception to the band’s comeback shows was particularly important for Dulli. “I definitely can’t speak for the others [in the band], but I know that during the last tour I wasn’t in the best shape of my life,” he says. When I suggest that feeling a little off-kilter would have been only natural – Dulli had been in a two-month coma prior to the 2000 tour – he quickly interjects: “I don’t really like to talk about any of that stuff these days. I will say, though, that emotionally or spiritually or whatever I was in a pretty unhealthy place. That’s what makes going out and playing our songs so well now really exciting. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but it does feel like I’m vindicating my former self.”

If Dulli feels a responsibility to clarify some of his musical legacy, it extends only as far as that final tour in 2000. Since then he’s worked constantly, although admittedly “in an enormously self-involved way,” he laughs. “I work on my own stuff, or do some production work on my friends’ bands. Or sometimes I just send Mark [Lanegan] some ideas – but we usually just argue like teenagers about basketball.” Lanegan and Dulli have shared a particularly productive relationship through the former’s involvement in the latter’s group The Twilight Singers for more than a decade. From this project they developed The Gutter Twins collaboration in 2003, which released an EP and an album and toured extensively, including to Australia in 2009. “Oh man,” Dulli recalls, “Mark and me played at Byron a few years back, and even though we were acoustic people seemed to be digging it.”

I compare their music to the exceedingly high decibel output from Mark Lanegan Band’s recent Australian tour, and Dulli is somewhat taken aback. “Really?” he asks. “I always find it surprising when people comment on how loud his show is, because Mark does not really like loud music. I’ve actually discussed this before with Josh Homme, and we were both saying that even though Mark looks like a rock’n’roll demon in Queens Of The Stone Age, we all know he’s packing the most protective earplugs imaginable.” So should Australian fans be bracing for loudness when The Afghan Whigs tour here for the first time later this year? “I think we’re all much more peaceful guys these days – but we are playing really well, so it could get loud.

When: Thursday July 26
Where: The Factory Theatre
More: Also playing at Splendour In The Grass alongside Jack White, Bloc Party, Smashing Pumpkins, The Shins, At The Drive-In, Lana Del Rey, Explosions In The Sky and loads more, held July 27–29 at Belongil Fields, Byron Bay