The Afghan Whigs have always made music that sounds like something very beautiful breaking apart – their songs are a plague outbreak at a bougee wedding, all glitz, glamour and pestilence.
In that way, In Spades is hardly a break from the Whigs formula – string arrangements are doled out like whip lashes across the back of a prisoner, and the lyrics are a mix of voodoo utterings and demonic rock’n’roll come ons. Instead, In Spades is an accumulation, a reinstatement of everything that the band does best.
Frontman Greg Dulli is his usual astonishing self, crooning through album highlight ‘Light As A Feather’ like some swaggering, syphilitic Elvis impersonator, and showing off the full heft of his range on bloodied ballad ‘Demon In Profile’. Fucked up and pissed off, he Jekyll and Hydes between slick ladies’ man and murderous philistine, offsetting flushes of poetry with guttural yells and whoops.
Although there are brief moments of calm in this particular storm – ‘Into The Floor’ is one slow, ragged exhale – they do not last long, and the album is most interested in the place where lust and loathing intersect.
From beginning to end, In Spades throbs and aches with sickness and with desire. It is ugly, and it is sleazy, and it hurts. But it’s also a masterpiece.
In Spades is out now through Sub Pop/Inertia.
