The Gutter Twins
Saturnalia
Sub Pop
The combination of Greg Dulli’s fallen angel croon and Mark Lanegan’s raspy voice of the damned raise The Gutter Twins’ first album Saturnalia beyond a collaboration project between two of the 90’s best-voiced frontmen.
Dulli, known for his work first with The Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers, and Lanegan, the former voice of The Screaming Trees and checkered solo career, tread familiar ground, with songs of devotion and despair.
However, instead of simply revisiting the sonic soundscapes that made them semi-famous, the collaboration brings out the best in both artists. It’s an expanded palette that puts samples in the tense “Each to Each.” It also allows Lanegan to try a little Dulli croon on the winning “Seven Stories Underground.”
Still, the album’s biggest appeal should be for fans of the cigarette-and-whiskey-voiced crooners. The dark lyrical obsessions and grunge tones are unmistakable and perhaps too-dated for post-millennia tastes.
—Jonathan Shieber
