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Apr 14, 2014The final product is intelligent and often fascinating, but it doesn't deliver like the Afghan Whigs do at their best, and ultimately comes off as a brave but somewhat unsatisfying experiment.
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Apr 15, 2014Do to the Beast may not always sound like an Afghan Whigs album, but it operates like one, scavenging the darker corners of pop history to create something personal, vital, and urgent.
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Apr 11, 2014The Afghan Whigs remain a high stakes band, conducting business not with a eye on self-preservation, but in the heat of the moment. [May 2014, p.72]
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Apr 14, 2014It has the focus and fire of a terrific Afghan Whigs album.
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MojoApr 23, 2014The deep soulfulness that always set The Afghan Whigs apart from the pack was no mirage, and on Do To The Beast, it has matured with grace and power. [May 2014, p.86]
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Q MagazineApr 23, 2014At times it's almost too much to take in, the album's secrets and flavours gradually revealing themselves on the third or fourth listen. [May 2014, p.112]
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Apr 14, 2014A brutal and beauteous slither from the grave.
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May 2, 2014The stylishly sleazy intensity is still there on their first record since 1998's excellent 1965, only with a wider palette.
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Apr 11, 2014Dulli is a man still capable of the best in sweat-soaked R&B flavoured rock ‘n’ roll, but he now has a range of subtler, more graceful maneuvers too.
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May 6, 2014Ultimately Do to the Beast lacks that gritty, seedy bite that defined The Afghan Whigs' greatest moments.
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Apr 11, 2014Dulli wears these songs like a favourite jacket, and they gradually increase in tension and widescreen melodrama.
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Apr 11, 2014The record is just playing true to form for the veterans, proving that the beast is back with teeth bared and a few more tricks up its hairy sleeves.
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Apr 11, 2014There isn’t a bad album in the Whigs / Twilight Singers / Gutter Twins back-catalogue but Do to the Beast manages to be at once more varied in style and more consistent in quality than any of its predecessors.
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Apr 15, 2014The least boring band in the world awoke from its slumber just to deliver a snoozer.
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Apr 14, 2014Lead vocalist/head louche Greg Dulli's dark obsessions and predatory narrators manage to sound as erotically entrancing as he pushes 50 as they did when he was courting 25, aging gracefully like a snifter of peaty scotch rather than a cup of flat beer.
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Apr 11, 2014It may not be the best album this year and it certainly won’t be one of the most influential or contemporary--there are slews of reviews here for those well-deserved albums--but it may rank among the most important.
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Apr 22, 2014The result is a combustible album that doesn’t seek to recapture the band’s old spark so much as light a new one.
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Apr 11, 2014This reinvented band reflects Dulli circa 2014, and this record sparks fresh intrigue but sadly never quite rekindles what made the Whigs so unique in the first place.
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Apr 14, 2014If you’re a fan of the Whigs, Do to the Beast will push all the right buttons and even add a few new ones for you to think about.
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Apr 14, 2014Dulli's throat is not quite what it was when he sang "I'm not the man my actions would suggest" on 1993's Debonair (but the jury is out on whether he's affecting strain or really straining). The outro, These Sticks, is a ballad whose chord progressions and textures wander far too close to Radiohead. Stick around, though, and the Whigs' stately menace wins out over the peculiar parallels.
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Jul 14, 2014Yes, they still have a few kinks that need to be worked out--for instance, they need to address the game of musical chairs at lead guitarist--but a whole, The Afghan Whigs look just as unstoppable as they did in their prime.
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MagnetApr 18, 2014The band's flair for drama comes to the forefront on the "be My Baby"--quoting "Algiers" and intensely epic closer "These Sticks." [No. 108, p.53]
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Apr 11, 2014While his obsession is sincere, the oppressive weight of the arrangements, freighted with heavy rock guitars and declamatory drums, occasionally fattened by dramatic strings, makes them hard to engage with on a personal level.
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Apr 14, 2014The Whigs seem only capable of reclaiming their turf in fits and starts.
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Apr 15, 2014At just 10 songs Do To The Beast is concise and enjoyable, but doesn’t have the cohesive energy and poetry of its predecessor.
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Apr 14, 2014Do To The Beast is nowhere near as tortured as the band’s masterpiece, 1993’s Gentlemen. But it’s still comfortable in the shadows, and for that matter, kicking up a good bit of noise.
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Apr 16, 2014Longtime fans will relish the return as Greg Dulli’s voice--full of longing, sex and anger--has never sounded better; new listeners will marvel at the drama that was so prevalent in bands from the ’90s, and that can be so lacking now.
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Kerrang!May 12, 2014It's been as long time, but Do To The Beast finds The Afghan Whigs doing what they do, ahem, beast. [19 Apr 2014, p.54]
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Apr 15, 2014They've managed to do themselves justice, and that should be enough not only to please their existing fans, but to win a few new ones too.
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Apr 30, 2014Mark the musical prowess of individual band members as key to fragile moments, nuances and nods to a variety of other styles: country twangs and slides, soul, classical, punk, funk, and even, blue-grass.
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Apr 24, 2014It still sounds like The Afghan Whigs, but it sounds more like re-workings of b-sides that may have shined in the sun of another decade.
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Apr 14, 2014The album plays more like another iteration of Dulli's solo career than the next chapter in the band's history.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 18 out of 21
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Mixed: 2 out of 21
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Negative: 1 out of 21
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Apr 15, 2014