Let's play a game of what-if. What if, instead of ditching these songs following the death of a close friend, Greg Dulli had finished Amber Headlights and released it on schedule, sometime in 2002? Would it sound any different than it does three years and two Twilight Singers albums later? Better or worse? More vital or less? Does hearing the Twilight Singers' 2003 album Blackberry Belle first change the way Amber Headlights sounds now?
The likelihood is that this album would have sounded just as disappointing in 2002 as it does in 2005. Amber Headlights is a step backwards after the lush beats and subdued songs of the Twilight Singers' debut, 2000's Twilight, but it also seems weak following the harrowing Blackberry Belle and even the so-so covers album She Loves You. The fact that it was released out of order only reinforces comparisons to the albums that would have preceded and followed Amber Headlights, forcing the listener to create an alternate timeline based on so many what-ifs.
The album starts with the nearly identical "So Tight" and "Cigarettes", both of which sport conspiratorial verses that peel out into racing choruses. But any momentum is tripped up by lyrics that border on parody: "Sexy lady, she wanna play me," Dulli sings on "So Tight", "after she get hot she starts to get a little shady." They're the best tracks on Amber Headlights, but we've heard better versions of essentially the same songs on Blackberry Belle-- "Teenage Wristband" and "Decatur Street" are not only more pointed and purposeful, but their momentum proves more reckless.
From there it's downhill. "Domani" recalls 1965, particularly "The Slide Song", but its swelling chorus suffers from the lyrics' forced ambiguity, which predictably compound love and drugs: "I'm never coming down/so beautiful/no one around." Songs like "Early Today (and Later Tonight)" handle romance with the rough disregard of a trashy revenge flick: all exploitation, no soul. The obvious pun of the album title doesn't help-- Amber Headlights = boobs! The drama that infuses Dulli's best work quickly descends to melodrama: "I used to love you/ now I'm going to hurt you," he sings on "Early Today (and Later Tonight)". "When We Two Parted" it ain't.
The other downside to these necessary comparisons with Dulli's previous and subsequent work is that they reveal how limited his particular aesthetic can be. He's made a fairly solid and respectable 20-year career out of very strictly defined creative parameters, drawing on specific strains of black American music-- 1960s and 70s soul in particular-- to bolster his white rock sensibility. His best songs are swirls of dark desire, pitting Dulli against his demons; at his best and darkest, it feels like the most he can even hope for is just to keep them at bay. Amber Headlights, on the other hand, sounds bloodless in comparison: his most dangerous demons seem to be nicotine and the persistent urge to remind us he's got some great blow. He doesn't just revel in his dark persona; he happily confesses his seedy sins as if every listener were a priest. But there's no real danger in these songs, no conflict, no stakes at all-- so no payoff, no catharsis. No wonder Dulli abandoned them.
