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Mar 2, 2020Random Desire is striking in its unified exploration of what comes after — years after — a heartbreak. Not a mere collection of 10 songs, it is an album in the classic sense, each track as essential as a chapter in a book or a scene from a movie.
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Feb 24, 2020Random Desire doesn't necessarily sound like the Afghan Whigs in their glory days, but it does a much better job of summoning the emotional energy and musical tension that made Congregation and Gentlemen classics, and it's the best music he's made since the end of the Whigs' first era.
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Feb 21, 2020It’s a deeply intimate, deeply beautiful examination of regret, loss, disappointment, solitude and personal demons, made all the more alluring by his warm, frank, subtly emotional vocals.
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Q MagazineFeb 19, 2020Where the spiraling The Tide is a ringer for his old band, he's at his best when he's playing a velvet-voiced Mephistopheles on A ghost or leading a spectral New Orleans jazz band on through the low-key electronic soundscape of Lockless. [Apr 2020, p.109]
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UncutFeb 19, 2020Dulli remains a restless and unpredictable frontman, constantly distorting his voice from a soaring falsetto into a bellowing bass, as though he's just getting started. [Mar 2020, p.27]
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Feb 21, 2020As 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.
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Feb 20, 2020As a whole, the album is a surprising turn for an artist who built much of his legend on self-loathing, brooding, and yearning (both existentially and carnally).
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Feb 19, 2020Existing fans will take this in stride since it’s cut from a dense cloth that Dulli has been stitching for the majority of his nearly 30 year career. They will find plenty here to pore over and try to untangle. Newcomers may scratch their collective heads yet still appreciate Dulli’s unconventional, minor key songwriting, distinctive vocals and playing that, even with guests on every track, comes primarily from his mind and hands.
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Feb 19, 2020Dulli has spent his whole career as a shape-shifting storyteller and Random Desire sees this continue. While most of his remaining '90s contemporaries have become self-parodies, Dulli continually finds ways to explore the hidden pain of the human experience.
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Mar 4, 2020This new solo album is at its strongest when Greg finds new ways to express himself. Where there are traces of the Whigs’ soul power, as on Sempre and The Tide, it’s hard not to compare the songs unfavourably to his day job.
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MojoFeb 19, 2020While the key of Random Desire is mostly subterranean, when the serpentine build of The Tide breaks, the impact is undeniably soulful and powerful. [Mar 2020, p.88]