I’m somewhat suspicious of the use of superlatives and imperatives in music appreciation, mostly because their presence often signals a discussion of some buzz band or other. That said, go see The Twilight Singers next time you get a chance, because when they came through Boston last week, they put on the best show I’ve seen all year.

Anything but a buzz band, the Twilight Singers began in 1997 as Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli’s side project and went on to release four albums–Twilight (2000), Blackberry Belle (2003), the covers album She Loves You (2005), and this year’s Powder Burns. An EP, A Sitch in Time, came out on iTunes last month. Over the years, the loosely formed Twilight Singers have seen many different collaborators–Harold Chichester, Matthias Schneeberger, Jesse Tobias, and Chris Phillips, to name a few. Though bassist Scott Ford has been around since Blackberry Belle, Dulli’s been the group’s only constant. Vanity act? Possibly–but (especially with their current lineup) The Twilight Singers totally earn it.

We’ve all seen plenty of bands whose onstage demeanor detracts from rather than enhances their performance. How many times have you gone to see some act with a cute name, passable riffs and great butts, only to find that there’s something about their exaggerated gestures that ultimately smacks of hollowness? This was how I felt watching the second opening band of the night, Stars of Track and Field. Though I can forgive the band for their name (they’re from Oregon, so I’m going to pretend the moniker is a shout-out to U of O running great Steve Prefontaine and not a reference to the first track on my favorite Belle & Sebastian album), and though they show some promise (they’ve kinda got that nu-gaze thing going on), they still have a ways to go musically before they grow into their stage act. Singing love songs while jamming back-to-back a la Spinal Tap is extremely cute, but it’s not that convincing.

It’s strange how the use of gesture can fall flat for one band and work like crazy for another. Real rock ‘n’ roll is about craft and performance, not good looks and carefully-timed posturing–but if you already love a band’s work, it’s hard not to interpret its non-musical idiosyncracies as signs of its added greatness. Once Stars of Track and Field’s gear was off the stage and the roadies were hauling in a mic stand with a beverage holder affixed to one side and an ashtray to the other, we had a funny feeling that The Twilight Singers were going to rock.

Ten minutes later, the room went dark, some intro notes from Powder Burns’ opening track “Toward the Waves” came over the speakers, and five orange orbs appeared at the side door of the Paradise, bobbing slowly toward the stage. A slight change in the air and a little more light revealed that the glowing orbs were attached to the cigarettes of Scott Ford, Dave Rosser, Bobby MacIntyre, Jeff Klein (who was doing double duty, having opened the evening with a solo set before SoTaF), and Greg Dulli. The band waved hello to the audience and then proceeded, balls-out, to rip “Teenage Wristband”–a breath-caught-in-the-throat, intricate piece from Blackberry Belle–into a gorgeous musical wreck that matched its rebellious lyrics.

On album, the Twilight Singers–albeit dark–sound pretty chill and sexy; it’s the kind of music that works well for a rainy day or for an attempt to lure someone cute and intelligent onto one’s divan. Even Powder Burns, which has some harder moments reminiscent of the driving guitar/screaming vocals combination that characterized the Afghan Whigs’ sound, ends with a track that’s horn-filled and slower. Onstage, however, The Twilight Singers came to life not as a slow, erotic meditation but as grinding Southern rock.

The band employed a lot of showmanship–including roadies who kept running to the stage to relight The Twilight Singers’ cigarettes–but Dulli’s gestures engaged the audience as equals without demanding their devotion. “Drink with me,” Dulli kept imploring us as he raised his plastic cup (not sure whether it actually contained booze, but hell, I’m just happy he’s not doing lines off his amp anymore). Then later in the set he dropped to the submissive position, mic in hand, and proclaimed “I’m down on my knees, Boston!” before screaming out the remainder of the song.

Not only was the performance smoke-filled, foot-stomping, hand-clapping, and gloriously loud, it brought the swampy, moody undertones on tracks like “Papillon” and “The Killer” to life. The harder, pleading renditions of the band’s catalogue underscored the fact that these aren’t some trust fund kids’ songs about pretty chicks–they’re complex explorations of the inherent depravity of human sexual and social relationships. Dulli sings about the underbelly of society, but with such balance that, by the end of any given song, you often can’t tell which side is up. “We go underground cuz there’s emptiness above,” he growled as the band concluded the set with the gritty, dirty “Forty Dollars.” Earlier, during “Fat City (Slight Return),” which explores how the rich and poor strata of society intersect through the medium of drugs, the audience screamed along, turning one guy’s meditation into a group experience.

Which is really what this band does. Dulli’s a borrower–his history of doing covers goes way back before She Loves You to his Afghan Whigs days–but more than that, his Twilight Singers are about collaboration. On this tour, they brought along Mark Lanegan (formerly of Screaming Trees); while the towering Lanegan braced himself against the mic stand and delivered powerful vocals, the rest of the band played backup on “Live With Me,” “I’ll Take Care of You,” and “Boogie Boogie.” The Twilight Singers take plenty from the music of others, but they return the favor in full–which made their covers of “Too Tough to Die” and “Amazing Grace” all the more moving. There was a point during the latter where my knees buckled under me and I had to put out my hands to steady myself. And that, my friends, is the way rock should be.

Set list:
Teenage Wristband
I’m Ready
Bonnie Brae
Too Tough to Die
Live With Me (w/ Mark Lanegan)
I’ll Take Care of You (with Mark Lanegan)
Sideways in Reverse
Amazing Grace
King Only
Fat City (Slight Return)
There’s Been an Accident
Candy Cane Crawl
Papillon
Martin Eden
Forty Dollars

Encore:
I Think/The Killer/Wolf
Boogie Boogie (with Mark Lanegan)
Flashback
Underneath the Waves

Photos by Christine for Superstarcastic. Post title courtesy of Drew Reese.

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