Never seen no devil wear his heart upon his sleeve....

I have loved Greg Dulli since I first heard "Fountain and Fairfax" on the My So-Called Life soundtrack in 1994. A friend of mine, who was also my co-worker at the indie record store, had a thing for the entire Afghan Whigs album Gentlemen, which was the original home of "Fountain and Fairfax". I picked up a used copy of the CD from the store and took it home.

I was instantly in superlove.

I knew who the Afghan Whigs were, had seen Greg Dulli on 120 Minutes or something similar. I'd just never really given him a listen. I knew he had a massive cult following, and I became a believer after hearing Gentlemen all the way through.

Years and life go on, I'm digging the Whigs, and then their last album, 1965, rolls into my world in 1998. I distinctly remember buying it from Shawn Ryan at his store in Homewood, AL. He told me that a lot of Whigs fans didn't like it, that it was maybe too polished. My heart (and panties) melted. It's perhaps the most sexually frank of the Whigs' albums, and it is breathtaking. Like so much of Dulli's work, both then and now, it's about fucking, and he's likely to tell you so himself. "John the Baptist", with his soulful, crooning admonishments of "anything for a lover", might be the most perfect song ever. EVER.

By 2000, he released the first of the Twilight Singers albums, Twilight. It was hit or miss for me, but when he hits me, it's a full-on wallop to the heart. "Annie Mae" kicks my ass with its compact, 2:20 pleading to be saved. I can never just listen to it once. <insert joke about lays> I will sing to it over and over and over, nailing the melody and the harmony, and I honestly can't decide which one I love more.

Gutter Twins. More Twilight Singers. Afghan Whigs retrospective. Love and love and more superlove.

So now it's 2011, and I've been in total groupie, musical lust with this guy for 17 years. (We could theoretically have an almost-grown kid.) The new Twilight Singers album Dynamite Steps hit stores a couple of weeks ago. It's been on constant rotation for a few days now. As probably goes without saying, I love it.

The first track I got my hands on was "Blackbird and the Fox", which was released several weeks before the CD was made available for online streaming. It features Ani DiFranco on backing vocals. I'm not usually a huge Ani fan, but it's a beautiful song. Mellow and poetic and darkly sexual, as usual (Cold blooded, but some like it freezing/I keep my blood in the bone/Just when you've forsaken me/That's when I turn my blinders on).

The gems for me are "Get Lucky" and "On the Corner". "Get Lucky" opens with a simple piano melody, legato and a little melancholy, like Dulli's haunting vocals. (And I am not that strong to let you go/And tell me does it scare you/when I look the other way/And thru the walls into your very soul?) Then it builds methodically with guitars and drums and strings in the signature Dulli way. "On the Corner" is the very next track on the album. It begins with a little drum machine timbre and keyboards, then guitar, some stringage. It's up-tempo and seemingly a little basic. Then here comes the brutally base voice that I love. He's harsh and pleading (Spread your legs/insert your alibi/A handsome man he was/the situation turned) and fucking explodes all over the place.

Sometimes I'll hear a track and it won't be working for me, whether on this album or any of the previous ones. I won't be so impressed or in love. But then something will pop, a sound or a deceptively random lyric, that pulls me right back into the music, and then I get it. He's masterful at creating the thematic album, too, which is something a lot of musicians don't even attempt anymore. Lyrically and melodically he'll build on a theme from song to song, self-referential in surprising ways. Sometimes you'll even hear the same (or a very, very similar) guitar riff a couple of albums later, immediately bridging you from one part of the Twilight World to another.

Greg Dulli is the kind of guy, musically anyway, that you either love or you really just don't. (I'm betting there are a few people who would say it's the same way personally, too.) The Afghan Whigs were a great blend of punk and soul that eventually grew up and moved on to bigger and better things. The Twilight Singers is really an artistic collective that lets Dulli work with whomever he chooses; he gets the band he needs to fit his creative mood at any given time. The soul is there, without question, and sometimes the punk. But there's also pop and folk and the occasional surprise that you just can't quite put your finger on. It's collaborative and complicated and beautiful, much like Dulli himself.

There's been a lot of public discussion and dissection of Dulli's bouts with drugs and sex and just about everything else. To state the obvious, all of that is what makes him who is he. But he's a fuck-or-be-fucked persona, never love, and it's dirty and gritty and transcendent in its honesty. He often works best when he's at the bottom, wailing of the struggle and the wallow.

The Twilight Singers are coming to Atlanta on May 5th, playing at the Masquerade, as part of their world tour. I'm very, very excited, because this will be the first time I'll have seen them live. I've missed the show a couple of times before, for various reasons. I will be there, and be there early, this time.

I would really, really love to hang with Greg Dulli for a night and watch him, to see what it is that makes him tick. His lyrics and music are pretty open, and I can hazard a few guesses on what I might find. I'm pretty shy in person, at least initially, and I would probably just stammer over myself and have trouble finding my voice. But I would love the opportunity to get too close to that sun with my feathery wax, if for no other reason than I can imagine just how hot that burn would be.