The Afghan Whigs are set to release their first studio album in five years, How Do You Burn?, on 9 September. How Do You Burn?, the ninth studio album from The Afghan Whigs, finds the band in peak form, making the most vaulting and thrilling music of their lives. The album is virile, ready-for-action, and finds frontman Greg Dulli as swaggering, enigmatic and darkly charismatic as ever, and singing up a storm.

The album reaches corners of sound that, twenty-six years after the band's inception, find them at an apex. Referencing Warren Zevon, Prince, and Zeppelin all while plugging in to the soul and R&B influences that have always set them apart, The Afghan Whigs are at a precipice of greatness. Says Dulli, “I’m beginning to see there are a million places we can go. I feel virile, ready for action, and I want to keep stalking greatness.” 

TRACK LISTING

I’ll Make You See God
The Getaway
Catch A Colt
Jyja
Please, Baby, Please
A Line Of Shots
Domino And Jimmy
Take Me There
Concealer
In Flames

“Divination/Cleromancy/Comes the card that I refused to see” – The Afghan Whigs, “Oriole”  

“Cleromancy” isn’t a word one normally finds in rock lyrics. Then again, In Spades – the new album by The Afghan Whigs, from which the new song “Oriole” hails – is defined only by its own mystical inner logic. The term means to divine, in a supernatural manner, a prediction of destiny from the random casting of lots: the throwing of dice, picking a card from a deck. From its evocative cover art to the troubled spirits haunting its halls, In Spades casts a spell that challenges the listener to unpack its dark metaphors and spectral imagery.  

On the one hand, In Spades is as quintessentially Afghan Whigs as anything the group has ever done – fulfilling its original mandate to explore the missing link between howling Midwestern punk like Die Kreuzen and Hüsker Dü, The Temptations’ psychedelic soul symphonies, and the expansive hard-rock tapestries of Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At the same time, this new record continues to push beyond anything in the Whigs’ previous repertoire – another trademark, along with the explosive group dynamic captured on the recording.  

Indeed, the chemistry of the lineup – Dulli, guitarists Dave Rosser and Jon Skibic, drummer Patrick Keeler, multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson, and Whigs co-founder/bassist John Curley – set the tone for In Spades’ creation. When it came to follow up the band’s triumphant return to recording – Do To the Beast (Sub Pop 2014), which was the band’s first ever Top 40 album, – the die was cast. “This is the first time since Black Love [the Whigs’ 1996 noir masterpiece] that we’ve done a full-blown band album,” Dulli says.  

The joys, sorrows, and upheavals of innocence and experience echo throughout In Spades: it powerfully documents where The Afghan Whigs have been, and where they might go next. For Dulli and Curley, it’s a journey that, since their origins as one of the first Sub Pop acts to be signed from outside the label’s Pacific Northwest base, has spanned decades. Dulli notes they were barely in their twenties when they first started the band, and yet here they are, fulfilling dreams long held and frequently realized. “Having a break from the Whigs helped me remember what made it so rewarding,” Curley says. “Over the course of a lifetime, there are constants, and there’s also change. You see who’s dropped off the vine – who’s going in reverse, and who’s still by your side. It’s interesting to see where life takes you, and where it doesn’t. That’s the journey and it hasn’t stopped.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Encompassing aspects of stoner, psych and indie-rock, Afghan Whigs have always veered towards the art-rock end of the spectrum, but this is their most direct and cohesive offering yet. Heavy but highly melodic, full of anthemic highs and measured restraint. A brilliantly formed tornado of rock and/or roll.

TRACK LISTING

Birdland
Arabian Heights
Demon In Profile
Toy Automatic
Oriole
Copernicus
The Spell
Light As A Feather
I Got Lost
Into The Floor

LOS ANGELES – In 1996, The Afghan Whigs were fresh off the worldwide success of Gentlemen. They had toured the world, graced magazine covers, television performances, major festivals, the works. However, their follow up album would not be Gentlemen II. It would be a pivot and a full public display of the growth and maturity of Greg Dulli’s songwriting.   

Released in the spring of 1996, Black Love was the Afghan Whigs’ fifth studio album overall. The music was inspired by lead singer Greg Dulli’s idea to make a film noir movie. Although the film was never made, it did help inform the album’s dark tone and fuel songs like the singles “Honky’s Ladder” and “Going To Town.” The album opener, “Crime Scene Part One” was inspired by the screenplay for “The Million Dollar Hotel,” while “Blame, Etc.” reflected on the troubled life of Temptations singer David Ruffin.  

This 20th Anniversary edition includes nine previously unreleased recordings. Among the standouts are acoustic versions of “Going To Town” called: “Go To Town” and “Crime Scene Part Two.” Also included is a demo for “Faded,” which closed the original album, as well as a solo piano cover of the New Order classic “Regret.” The unreleased material also highlights the band’s creative process with “Mick Taylor Jam” and “Wynton Kelly Jam.”

‘Do To The Beast’ is the first new album by The Afghan Whigs in over a decade and a half. Founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1988, the band has long stood out from its peers, with their savage, rapturous blend of hard rock, classic soul, and frontman Greg Dulli’s searing angst and obsessions.

The new album is both a homecoming - it marks their return to Sub Pop, for whom the Whigs were the first signing from outside the label’s Northwest base - and a glimpse into the future of one of the most acclaimed bands of the past twenty five years.

‘Do To The Beast’ is an appropriately feral title for one of the most intense, cathartic records of Dulli’s entire career. It adds fresh twists to The Afghan Whigs canon: there’s the film noir storytelling of ‘Black Love’, the exuberance of ‘1965’, the brutal introspection of ‘Gentlemen’. However, the album exudes a galvanized musical spirit and rhythmic heft that suggest transcendence and hope amidst the bloodletting.

Recorded in LA, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and Joshua Tree - a virtual map of the band’s past and present homes, the album features Whigs co-founders Greg Dulli and John Curley, along with the core band of guitarists Dave Rosser and Jon Skibic, multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson and drummer Cully Symington. Also featured are soul iconoclast Van Hunt, Mark McGuire (Emeralds), Johnny ‘Natural’ Nagera (Usher’s musical director), Alain Johannes (Queens Of The Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys), Clay Tarver (Bullet LaVolta, Chavez), Dave Catching (QOTSA, Eagles of Death Metal), among others.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: Greg Dulli and co return in fine style with this swaggering blend of rock'n'roll angst, classic r'n'b and soul. A dark and uncompromising tour de force.

'Though the Afghan Whigs were still about a year away from hitting the peak of their powers in the studio, their second album, 1990's "Up in It", was a major improvement over their self-released debut, and it was their first recording to suggest that they would mature into one of the best American rock bands of the 1990s. As a songwriter, Greg Dulli was starting to really get in touch with his self-loathing, and "Retarded," "White Trash Party," and "I Know Your Little Secret" offer a powerful and sometimes disturbing look into one man's obsessions. Just as importantly, the band had finally learned to make the most of their musical muscle; Greg Dulli's nicotine-laced growl merged 'heavy-alternative' bellow with a soul man's sense of phrasing, while the guitars of Dulli and Rick McCollum and the rhythm section of John Curley and Steve Earle managed to combine bruising power with a remarkable sense of drama and dynamics.'