Afghan Whigs’ on-off status over the 16 years between 1965 and this year’s Do To The Beast sees them undeniably “on” before a sell-out crowd. Their triple-guitar threat makes an incendiary noise, with frontman Greg Dulli at the eye of the storm, ranging from overcharged admonitions to husky confessions. <\/p>\n
“Good, I get to dress up and play the assassin again,” he crooned on When We Two Parted, in a set revisiting 1993 breakthrough Gentlemen, 1965 and covers of all sorts from The Beatles to Andrew Lloyd Webber, all given the Whigs’ scorched-earth treatment. But it’s no nostalgia-fest: live, Do To The Beast’s songs surpassed their studio counterparts, with Matamoros exploding like a Molotov cocktail and Royal Cream building into a unholy cacophony before Dulli stalked the the front of the stage and took to a tom-tom, making the tribal-gathering connection explicit: everyone here was looking for transcendence, not least Dulli himself. <\/p>\n
The Whigs’ songs – all backstreets and barflies, comedowns and come-ons – offer an escapist trip. If the consummate showman revelled in the role of tour guide, he did so with a wink and a smile. <\/p>\n
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Afghan Whigs’ on-off status over the 16 years between 1965 and this year’s Do To The Beast sees them undeniably “on” before a sell-out crowd. Their triple-guitar threat makes an incendiary noise, with frontman Greg Dulli at the eye of the storm, ranging from overcharged admonitions to husky confessions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8023,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,16],"tags":[],"issue":[10038],"class_list":["post-183039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live","category-reviews","issue-september-2014"],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n