Curious Hair wrote:
My first criticism of In Spades? "Birdland" is so good and could have built up into something even better. So far, so good. I love this band, whether you're calling them the Afghan Whigs, the Twilight Singers, Greg Dulli's Big Swinging Dick, whatever.
"Arabian Heights" kicks too much ass. It's like Achtung Baby meets Stax.
"Demon in Profile," like I said, has that Twilight Singers lounge piano sound. But man, it's got feeling.
"Toy Automatic" is the first weak spot, feels like Whigs By Numbers, but it picks back up with the next two cuts. "Light as a Feather" fucks.
And what a one-two punch to close it out. Favorite album of the year so far, but I'll admit that I'm sentimental about this band. Let's get Erotic Lawyer and Baby McNown's thoughts.
I was listening to this streaming before my vinyl came in. Definetly a twilight singers album, but that is just fine by me. I woukdnt buy gentleman coming from current Dulli.
So I listened to the two songs that they had on iTunes and Spotify. Then I got the streaming notice and I am with you Birdland got me immediately. Perfectly paced album which Dulli is pretty good about (ignore the first twilight record or congregation and before).
I warmed up to this immediately. Do To the Beast took me almost two years to like. Now this album will never the raw brutality of Gentleman or the perfect Black Love. Even Blackberry Belle has just a nerve you can't touch. In Spades has a tight run time excellent sonic textures classic Dulli vocals and refined songwriting.
I don't know that this is much different feel wise than Do to the Beast just much more appealing to the ears. These two new albums are like Check Your Head and I'll Communication to me. They had a sound they worked in and it spilled over and refined it in the followup. I don't know if you have seen video of birdland live but I am not sure I like that lol. I get the concept but Greg looks a little too stiff doing that.