With the Afghan Whigs and the Twilight Singers, Greg Dulli has been one of rock’s foremost investigators of the dark and vicious face of love and lust, steeped in soul and in alcohol-laced contrition.
Having come up through the grunge era but never really fitting in with the sound of the time, it’s fitting that his first solo album is a master class in mining the musical spectrum, taking in everything from Prince’s carnal yelps on Scorpio to a sparse, desert-bound echo of Nick Cave’s devil-baiting gothic drama on A Ghost, somehow combining it with a backbone of Dr John hoodoo in a manner that seems entirely natural.
Taken as a whole, though, Random Desire could only ever have come from Dulli.
It’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.
As he reaches the status of elder statesman, here he takes the mantle with the utmost grace.