SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: THE AFGHAN WHIGS – SOFT CONTROL

THE AFGHAN WHIGS
SOFT CONTROL
THE ROYAL CREAM/BMG

Whatever the alternative rock term was supposed to mean when it was coined, or what it means in today’s musical terms, makes no difference as far as Greg Dulli, The Afghan Whigs, and the music they created – they remain exactly what this term was created for, and their latest album Soft Control is here to prove it. Essentially, it is that rock music with substance that doesn’t have the charts and success as its first priority. If it makes it or not is not the point, but it is to present a certain musical/lyrical concept that has substance both for the artists that created it and for the audience it aims for and actually reaches.

Some 40 years on, Dulli and The Afghan Whigs as his main project have stuck to their guns of creating music centered around a certain feeling/emotion (emo, if you will, but without distinct screaming), as a recipe for coming up with something meaningful and substantial and luckily, nothing changes here with Dulli and the team centering the 10 tracks around that David Bowie quote about aging as “an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.”

For Dulli and The Afghan Whigs it means remaining true to themselves and creating some great rock music.

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