The Afghan Whigs – When We Two Parted

It’s a grave misfortune of musical fate that the Afghan Whigs ever had anything to do with Sub Pop. Branded for a crime they didn’t commit, the Whigs never quite escaped the yoke of a half-baked musical revolution that had nothing to do with the earnest, near-pretentious white-boy soul and scalding emotional howl that carpets every shaggy inch of Gentlemen.

The cover artwork alone is incredible. Children locked in uncomfortable adult poses are cast in sepia, like a forward thinking memory. Looking at it now, I can’t resist a comparison to the faux-Kevin Smith approaches to sexual politics that have soiled the mainstream in the past decade. I picture Ben and Jen, costumed from Gigli, in the same positions and have to run off for a change of trousers because I’ve pissed myself laughing.

But let’s focus down to the centerpiece, the Columbine Roller-Rink anthem When We Two Parted. I picture Dulli singing this to an anonymous party girl he’s brought home, over whose face hovers a projected image of his One True Love, while disaffected youth skate slowly in orbit around the bed. His arrogance is diminished here, the first place on the record where perhaps he’s not quite so proud to have fucked up. Like the Moebius-strip memory of the cover image, this song is tied to the electro-Stax final admission of ‘I Keep Coming Back’. I wish I could say that this sort of self-awareness is what kept me off the slow-dance floors of my childhood. In fact, as Greg Dulli well knows when he’s drunk enough, it was simple cowardice.

(Brought to you by the folks at The Pork Store.)