The Afghan Whigs played Royale – 4/27
Cincinnati-bred rockers The Afghan Whigs hit Boston for a stop on their 40th anniversary tour, with support from similarly long-running neo-psych outfit Mercury Rev.
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Perhaps it’s uncouth to say, but on its face, the phrase “40th anniversary tour” doesn’t inherently conjure vitality. Four decades is a long time, and any outfit that’s endured that stretch (even with a lengthy hiatus breaking things up) is well within its rights to show a tinge of rust. For The Afghan Whigs, this is not the case. From the opening seconds of last week’s Royale show – wherein frontman Greg Dulli demanded his sound engineer crank the drum sample forming the backbone of “Parked Outside” to a chest-pounding volume – the Whigs sounded positively commanding.
Perhaps it was a hunger for getting back on the road at their heels – it was only the second night of tour, which came nearly two years after the band’s last show – but there was a particular fire to the set that had Dulli and company’s brooding, soul-kissed alt-rock sounding unstoppable under cover of shadows and moody-blue light. The ensemble does look a bit different these days than the one that debuted on Sub Pop in ’90 – only Dulli and bassist John Curley remain from the band’s original lineup – but the current crew including drummer Patrick Keeler, multi-instrumentalist Rick G. Nelson and guitarist Christopher Thorn (also of Blind Melon, weirdly) have developed a striking chemistry of their own on both classic tunes and new ones.
The Whigs have released three new LPs since formally reconvening in 2011, and in another instance you might not expect from a band celebrating this kind of anniversary on the road, those songs (including the aforementioned tone-setting opener) made up nearly half the set. That they did so seamlessly is a testament to the band’s enduring command of songs at once tortured and poetic – and the undiminished power of their primary instrument in Dulli’s gritty, fervently emotive vocals. A survey of the band’s beloved ’90s era was also in store of course, with a handful of tracks each from the peak-performance trifecta of Black Love, Gentlemen and 1965 rounding out a tight, encore-free set. By the end of the night, the notion of rounding 40 felt like an afterthought – the Whigs were as indispensable as ever.
Opening up the show, in an amusing contrast to their hosts, was a considerably more whimsical set from psychedelic troubadours Mercury Rev. Led by longtime constants in singer/guitarist Jonathan Donahue and mononymous multi-instrumentalist Grasshopper, the current quartet balanced some favorites from their 1998 classic Deserter’s Songs amidst some deeper cuts and a Traffic cover with a charming theatrical flair.
Scroll below for photos from both sets.
