Roger's Year in Music 2014: Do to the Beast, by Afghan Whigs

It's hard to believe Greg Dulli is almost 50 years old. Then again, it's been 21 years since the album Gentlemen.

Dulli later described the intent behind The Afghan Whigs was to exist as "a cross between the Band, the Temptations, and Neil Young playing with Crazy Horse."

From Stephen M. Deusner's review at Pitchfork:

It's a sensation similar to watching a Hitchcock film, and perhaps Dulli picked up the trick as a film student at the University of Cincinnati in his pre-Afghan days. (When the band signed with Elektra in the early 1990s, the label agreed to fund his feature-length directorial debut, which he sadly never found the time to make.) He deployed the suspense-building technique during his tenure with that band, but didn’t really master it until well into the Twilight Singers’ catalog. That latter outfit never had a set lineup, so it could expand or contract in accordance with Dulli’s creative whims, often giving him a larger orchestral palette to work with. In that regard, it’s tempting to call Beast a Singers record rather than an Afghan joint: It’s carefully and richly arranged, less a rock album than a rock soundtrack.