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twilight singers
Twilight Zone Five years since their last album, Powder Burns, the Twilight Singers return with another gem, Dynamite Steps. Sasha Petrova has a chat with frontman Greg Dulli about life, music and monkeys If you want some insight into the psyche of the Twilight Singers’ Greg Dulli, read Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. This revelation came about from a question about Dulli’s diverse career which has seen him delving into musical production, acting, singing for four bands (including the influential Afghan Whigs), and appearing in albums such as the Foo Fighters’ self-titled debut album and various tribute compilations. “I’m polygamous,” Dulli laughs. “Humans are like monkeys, you know? You’re swinging on one tree one day and another tree the other day.” During his musical career spanning 20 years, Dulli has shared his creative juice with many revered musicians, more notably Mark Lanegan (former member of Queens of the Stone Age) with whom he founded the Gutter Twins. Lanegan also contributes to the latest Twilight Singers album Dynamite Steps, along with Ani DiFranco, Joseph Arthur, Petra Haden and Nick McCabe. “I like different people’s points of view,” says Dulli. “One person’s life is not so interesting that they can’t learn tricks from others. A healthy exchange of ideas will put both people in a direction that neither would go alone.” It is perhaps this desire to draw inspiration from others which makes Dynamite Steps such a rich brew of colourful, melodic variations: dramatic, sorrowful and incredibly intelligent, but never static. As I listened, I imagined myself sitting in a dark, echoing theatre, watching an eerily beautiful musical, an image not lost on Dulli. “I have always been drawn to visual music; cinematic music; music that you can see and feel as well as hear.” “I think there’s a lot of ambience and a lot of different moods and movements happening throughout (Dynamite Steps). When I took it out for its first drive, I drove Find us on Facebook
through Laurel Canyon and up Mulholland Drive (in LA). It was the perfect complement.” But beyond the album’s visual quality, what is it actually about? The Twilight Singers’ last album Powder Burns had the word “confessional” thrown at it by various critics. Does Dynamite Steps hold any clues as to what was going on during Dulli’s long break between albums? “I think this album is more abstract. I’ve been asked if there’s an overarching theme. Perhaps, but I tend to allow that to go to the listener, rather than me telling you what it’s about. To be incredibly immodest, it’s just a product of my rather fertile imagination”. Not one to sit at home twiddling his thumbs, the last five years have been proof of Dulli’s polygamous tendencies. “Our last show with the Twilight Singers was in Brisbane in January, 2007. The rest of that year Mark Lanegan and I were writing the Gutter Twins record and in 2008 and 2009 we toured that record. Then in 2010 I wrote Dynamite Steps.” At the end of 2010, Dulli undertook his first solo tour, performing songs from the Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers and Gutter Twins. “Yeah, I did Europe and the United States,” he says. “It was cool to sing songs that I hadn’t sung in a really long time. It was kind of an emotionally revealing experiment for me as a human being.” “I was doing songs from 20 years ago and I was also doing songs that were only two months old. To go from 20 years ago to 60 days ago was a fascinating juxtaposition for me. You don’t want to do it every day, but when it happens it’s quite refreshing, like jumping off a cliff into a cool lake.” Dynamite Steps is out now on Sub Pop through Inertia.
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reverb magazine issue #056 — March 2011 19