Dynamite Steps

The sound is a return to the Whigs' finest and the mood is whiskey, cigarettes and damnation.

The album sways and moves in ways we haven't seen since 1998′s 1965. Dynamite Steps sits comfortably in his canon, and that is perhaps the perfect compliment.

Dulli's only got a set number of tricks up his sleeve, and Dynamite Steps deploys them all: the vocal soaring above the maelstrom of guitars (a trick he perfected back on the Whigs' 1965), the off-key croon that other singers might AutoTune, the delicate piano contrasting the gutter guitars, the sordid come-ons masking dark existential doubts, the sudden groove as if someone stepped on the gas.

Dulli is the king of building to a pinnacled, string-filled moment and he nails it here. The burning edifice of the heart rarely sounds so transcendent.

I'd call Dynamite Steps a solid listen – but not an imminent classic.

Whatever name Dulli is working under, his creative project stays the same: providing an opposition to indie rock's sensitive-male majority.

With Dynamite Steps, Dulli has delivered the fully-realized statement of self-mythology that his fans knew he was capable of, strutting his stuff like agéd legends who've long since been internalized, making it look easier than it should be.

"Waves" may boast a certain post-punk urgency, but Dulli's on to something more seductive here. [Mar 2011, p.99]

Whatever fork in the road Dulli takes, one thing's for sure: Dynamite Steps lives up to the expectations he's set, at least musically speaking.

Dynamite Steps, appropriately enough, is an album of powder kegs and bright flashes -- moments that boldly spark, then quickly burn out.

While Dulli has mined the same vein of pop music for almost 25 years, he has nonetheless accomplished an awful lot with it.

Dulli thrives on atmosphere, and while his inability to write the kind of sharp hooks or memorable choruses that have elevated other semi-dystopian malcontents into the relative mainstream is evident throughout the album, that sense of place makes Dynamite Steps feel less like a collection of songs and more like a long, dangerous, and unpredictable night on the town.

Unleashing a persona that's part barroom romantic, part serial killer, Greg Dulli's Twilight Singers project has now eclipsed his Nineties soul-grunge outfit Afghan Whigs.

As a collection of songs and sentiments there is a nagging sense that Dulli is revisiting old haunts. Yet it feels reassuring, as Dynamite Steps continues the resurgent course he's been treading in recent years.

Dynamite Steps as a whole doesn't live up to its potential.

Fifth album from former Afghan Whigs mainman's collective. [Apr. 2011, p. 94]

Gorgeously produced by the Syndicate, many of these tracks are piano-driven, mid-tempo dirges that take a while to get rolling; occasionally, as on "Be Invited," they just circle the block.

Dulli generally succeeds in keeping things as darkly hypnotic as a rain-lashed midnight motorway.