Do To the Beast

Afghan Whigs
SUB POP

Apr 16, 2014 at 5:00 am

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Growing up in Cincinnati does a few things to a person — having knowledge of what an Ass Pony is, random encounters with Blessid Union of Souls, and mall food court conversations with the Lachey family. (It’s been a full life.) Not regrettable, though, is a 513-based adoration for all things Greg Dulli, centerpiece of the Afghan Whigs. I was a latecomer to the Dulli-as-deity lifestyle, but I still hold his first Twilight Singers LP as a desert island disc and my gateway drug. Do To the Beast, Dulli’s finest effort in years, comes more than a decade after the Whigs’ disbanding, and minus lead guitarist Rick McCollum. The high-energy, pulsing “Matamoros” fits seamlessly with the more atmospheric “It Kills.” “Algiers” loses its religion in riffage but still satisfies. Twenty-eight years in, Dulli remains a god.