The Twilight Singers
Saturday, September 17, 2011
There's a good chance one of your favorite bands is on a Classic Album tour right now. Primal Scream is playing the entirety of Screamadelica, Echo and the Bunnymen are putting on Ocean Rain with a string section, and the Lemonheads are touring It's a Shame About Ray. Lots of artists who had a modicum of success or attention a decade or more ago are getting in on the act. Such shows can be a good way for newer fans to catch up on a band's finest moments in a live setting, but they often feel like cynical ploys to sell more tickets at a flagging stage of a band's later career. It also means that bands have to play the albums as they were released: fillers, live clunkers, and all.
Thankfully, there were no such problems at the Twilight Singers show Saturday night. The band cancelled a Fillmore appearance in May when one of the band members fell ill midtour. This makeup show was billed as a straight-through performance of its second album, Blackberry Belle, released in 2003 to much critical acclaim, as well as a full second set. It sold out fast, with promises of special guests Apollonia Kotero, Mark Lanegan, and Petra Haden, all of whom appear on the album. (Kotero later canceled due to an unspecified "personal injury," and Queens of the Stone Age/Eagles of Death Metal guitarist Dave Catching was added to the bill.)
As we arrive, the Great American is heaving with eager fans, some of whom are definitely old enough and dedicated enough to have seen the Afghan Whigs, singer Greg Dulli's previous band. The audience is a mix of demure girls in slinky dresses and fratboys in check shirts. People are talking animatedly about having flown in from Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles just for the show.
Shortly after nine, the lights dim and the band members walk casually out. They're dressed all in black, and look like a very debonair gang. As the lights come up - only a few spots in red and purple, casting a menacing glow - the first thing I notice is that there is far less of Dulli than there used to be. The man is a seriously svelte sex machine.
With no introduction, they launch into album opener "Martin Eden." Almost immediately, there's a mini-moshpit and the fratboys are punching the air. A formerly sedate-looking chap starts pogoing and yelling and loses his glasses in the ensuing melee, while a kissing couple behind me comes up for air only long enough to holler "WHOOOOOO!" every few seconds. Another guy has his left arm in a sling, but that doesn't stop him from taking dozens of photos. A forest of iPhone screens give the room a weird glow, and bouncers rush forward to scold people for using flash photography.
Two songs in, Petra Haden comes out in a demure lace frock to sing backup vocals on the gloriously anthemic "Teenage Wristband," but the band doesn't acknowledge the crowd's presence until before sixth song "Decatur" - perhaps to mark the end of Side One? Dulli announces, "We're all in this together now," and exhorts San Francisco to put our collective hands in the air. Most of us comply, although the fratboys look a bit miffed because they've been doing just that from the beginning.
Longtime fans will know that Dulli loves to charm and goad his audiences in roughly equal measure. An Afghan Whigs or Twilight Singers song is never complete without a couple of snarky asides, or an extemporized lyric or two from another artist's song. Tonight, though, he seems subdued and slightly distant. He does slow down "Papillon" to add a couple of verses of Steve Miller's "The Joker," but the band seems determined to plow through the album as advertised: no interruptions, no extras.
Mark Lanegan lumbers on in a backward baseball cap to growl through album closer "Number Nine," which Haden caps with some gloriously creepy banshee wailing, and then Blackberry Belle has been paid full tribute and the band is gone. We stand around, looking and feeling a little bewildered. It felt like watching a performance rather than being involved in it. rushed and contractually obliged. It didn't feel right that we couldn't participate.
Maybe the band members felt that way, too, because when they return for the second set, they seem a lot looser and Dulli is in more genial form. They open with "Last Night in Town" (from this year's Dynamite Steps) and skip back to "That's Just How That Bird Sings" (from first album Twilight as Played by the Twilight Singers from 2000) before jumping to "Bonnie Brae" from 2006's Powder Burns.
Lanegan returns for "God's Children," taken from his and Dulli's Gutter Twins side project, Saturnalia, from 2008. He hunches uncomfortably over the mic and barely seems to notice there's an audience. He sticks around for swampy, bluesy covers of Massive Attack's "Live with Me" and Tim Rose's "Boogie Boogie."
Dulli seems to have settled into his usual role as showman. He spins a finger in the air and tells us it's time to bring it way, way down. People are still talking loudly on the sidelines, but Dulli is patient. He steps away from the microphone to grin at the cameras in the front row. The other band members watch as he urges us to hush. The moshers stop heaving. Unmiked, he sings the opening lines of "Somethin' Hot" from the Afghan Whigs' 1965 album: "I want you so bad, after tonight I'll never walk the same/And you're to blame." The room falls into a rapturous thrall. He's making us want more. He's making us wonder if we'll get more Whigs music. Lit by a single red spot and still away from the mike, he sings "I wanna get you high/I wanna get next to you," matter-of-factly. But we're not to be so lucky. He shrugs, nods to his colleagues, and they fire up She Loves You's "Too Tough to Die."
Dulli sits at the piano and introduces the band. "I'm the luckiest man in the room," he tells us - whether it's because he's having such a good time or because he's in the best band in the world isn't clear. "And now I need a kick drum, please!" he hollers as the band heads into the piano-driven, "Layla"-esque "She Was Stolen." Haden reappears, and the two exchange gleefully conspiratorial smiles as her angelic, dreamy vocals intertwine with his on "Candy Cane Crawl": "Slow down, lean in/Call up that feeling."
Back on guitar, Dulli drops the goofy frat-friendly chorus from Whigs' favorite "Miles Iz Ded" ("Don't forget the alcohol - ooh, baby!") into "Never Seen No Devil." He cups an ear to the audience as they sing along. "I think we should do another one," he whispers, and Haden departs as they launch into the drum-machine-driven "On the Corner" before leaving the stage for the second time tonight.
The first encore is all too brief. "This is for the ladies!" Dulli says, grinning, as the band plays the slinky "Love" from the first album. Then they step it up, with Dulli hollering, "SAN FRANCISCO, GIVE ME ALL YOU GOT!" as they tear through a funky "Annie Mae" and a storming version of "Cigarettes," the last of which is from his Amber Headlights side project.
The second encore is shorter still. The band re-emerges with special (late?) guest, guitarist Dave Catching. Dulli introduces him as "the most beautiful man in rock 'n' roll," and says they have to end on something there's no coming back from. They kick into some seriously rockin' guitar work on Neil Young's "Hey Hey My My" that feels slightly unrehearsed, and then they're gone again.
Critic's Notebook: I was sorry not to hear "Get Lucky," my favorite track from Dynamite Steps. And it was a shame about some of the audience members, who wouldn't shut the fuck up during the quiet songs. My pal Action Jackson referred to it as "a convergence of assholes from Benicia," and the moshpit as "a melting pot of disaster."
First set: Blackberry Belle
Martin Eden
Esta Noche
Teenage Wristband
St. Gregory
The Killer
Decatur St.
Papillon
Follow You Down
Feathers
Fat City (Slight Return)
Number Nine
Second set
Last Night in Town
That's Just How That Bird Sings
Bonnie Brae
God's Children
Live with Me
Boogie Boogie
Gunshots
Too Tough to Die
She Was Stolen
Candy Cane Crawl
Never Seen No Devil
On the Corner
Encore 1
Love
Annie Mae
Cigarettes
Encore 2
Hey Hey My My
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