The Verve - Forth
The band most likely to have split up by the time you finish the review return with a decidedly schizophrenic and mostly underwhelming fourth LP
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour
Hailed by fans, critics, and even Mark E. Smith as their greatest long-player, Hex Enduction Hour receives another reissue.
Primal Scream - Beautiful Future
Veteran genre hopping Scots return with their poppiest album yet. It's got handclaps, it's got bells, and at times it's very, very funny.
Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends
Rock royalty return with an arty title, a legendary, experimental producer and promises of an innovative new sound...but little else.
Various Artists - Independent's Day 08
A noble concept which ultimately fails to exceed the sum of its parts. Probably because it's got Feeder on it.
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
Jul 9, 2008
As band names go, The Gutter Twins is pretty much perfect in encapsulating both Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan as personas. Dulli's The Afghan Whigs were a sleazy, snarling mess, combining a love of soul music and a love of sex, violence and disturbing people. Lanegan's Screaming Trees, meanwhile, were US alt rock outsiders that often sounded more world weary than their grunge contemporaries.
More than anything though, The Gutter Twins is the perfect name for the band that made Saturnalia, for it is at turns an ominous, twisted record which projects a truly dystopian vision of all that Dulli and Lanegan survey. The sleaze and anti-glamour of their previous bands is present and correct, but here it is told via slow burning, sometimes spiritual sounding blues. This, in the best possible way, is music from the gutter.
Saturnalia begins with an eerie blues riff, until an extremely gruff sounding Mark Lanegan enters the fray... "Oh Mama / ain't no time to fall to pieces / He has arrived" Macabre strings enter, along with a strong feeling that this is going to be an unnerving, uncomfortable ride. And also that Dulli and Lanegan have been listening to a lot of Nick Cave.
The vocal duties are shared fairly equally throughout. So dark are Lanegan's parts, that when Dulli, never a stranger with the Whigs to using his voice to disturbing, sleazy effect, begins to sing, tracks like the grandiose 'God's Children' come almost as light relief compared to the relentless menace of 'All Misery/Flowers'.
There are patches of light within the darkness, though. 'The Body' is a, relatively speaking, whimsical folk blast, complete with beautiful harmonies and strange electronic squiggles. The exact same squiggles are used throughout 'Each to Each', a brave but unfulfilling attempt to cross genres which is unquestionably the LP's nadir. An atmospheric, beautiful classical guitar is swamped by clunky loops, and what could have been an interesting meeting of styles sounds unfortunately like a goth Republica.
Saturnalia is an undeniably brave record, with bleak soundscapes and intricate storytelling replacing the more direct songwriting of the duo's pasts. Only on the soulful organ of LP standout 'Bete Noire', ironically voiced by Lanegan, does the Stax sound the Whigs loved so much emerge.
Even when The Gutter Twins miss the mark, this is an album that demands full attention and a strong constitution. A more atmospheric LP you are unlikely to hear this year. Saturnalia's closing track 'Front Street' ends with a refrain of "we're gonna have some fun, son." You won't find it here, but do not be put off.
