Greg Dulli closes his first official solo album with a richly atmospheric, slowly unfurling ballad called “Slow Pan”—a fitting move for an artist who approaches rock’n’roll with the methodical gaze of a cinematographer. Over the past 30 years, the ensembles Dulli has fronted have assumed different names—first, the Afghan Whigs, then The Twilight Singers, and then back to the Whigs— but his widescreen sensibility has never wavered. Usually, the term “cinematic” is reserved for instrumental music suggesting grandeur and gravitas, but Dulli prefers to drop you into the thick of the action. His records are like romantic thrillers with all the exposition and character development stripped out, leaving only moments of heated conflict and disarming confessions.
Random Desire further affirms Dulli’s vision, even in the absence of his trusty bands behind him. With the Afghan Whigs once again on hiatus—following bassist/co-founder John Curley’s return to school and the 2017 death of guitarist Dave Rosser from colon cancer—Dulli conceived Random Desire as a one-man operation, but ended up pulling in various longtime associates in for guest spots. The branding and methodology have changed, but the intent and effect are ultimately the same. Like pretty much every record Dulli has made since the Whigs left Sub Pop in the early ‘90s, Random Desire deftly mediates between guitar-slashing catharsis and candelabra-lit elegance. It is filled with the nocturnal ambiance, climactic crescendos, and savvy musical references we have come to expect from a Greg Dulli product. The instant you hear the tensely tapped piano pulses of “Sempre” and “The Tide,” you know it’s only a matter of time before the songs erupt into Joshua Tree-toppling surges, with Dulli engaging the most ravaged register of his voice like a guitarist kicking on an effects pedal.
Random Desire also abounds with nods to Dulli’s omnivorous musical taste. He was once the only ‘90s indie-rocker to drop Lauryn Hill covers covers in his sets; now he’s practically adopting a triplet flow on the shuffling slow jam “Scorpio.” The Nick Cave-esque “A Ghost” invokes enough New Orleans voodoo vibes to yield Dulli’s very own “Red Right Hand.” The album’s most devastating song requires no such theater: "Marry Me," a mournful acoustic ballad, is a mea culpa from a non-committal cad who never worked up the courage to say those words to the one who just walked out on him.
As much as it draws from Dulli’s dog-eared little black book, Random Desire features its share of inspired tangents, when he forgoes the elaborate full-band effect to embrace the mad-scientist possibilities of his solo set-up. The trip-hoppy lament “Lockless” features the album’s most pronounced use of electronics, and a brass fanfare that jolts the song back to life after Dulli powers down into a slow-motion slur. But the album’s biggest surprise is less musical than spiritual. On the bass-driven gospel sprint “Pantomima,” Dulli’s flair for heart-racing hysterics is reoriented around a feeling you rarely encounter in his discography: joy. “Desolation, come and get it!,” he beckons ironically, sounding more like a carnival barker than a prophet of doom. He seems to relish the irony: after 30 years, he needed to make a Greg Dulli record in order to sound a little less like Greg Dulli.
Buy: Rough Trade
