When my kid's watch Singles some years down the line and comment on the flannel and the Mudhoney references ("touch me I'm dick"), and they say "daddy, people were funny looking when you were a kid", I will smile and eat my Soilent Green.
I "came of age" in the 1990's. The music of the period played it's part in my life. I Lost my virginity in 1996 listening to My Bloody Valentine, I think Fugazi and Pavement were the shit, and smoked a lot of weed and tried to wrap my head around Neutral Milk Hotel. That counts right?
Still, I have the Brian Wilson problem of not feeling like I was born for these (or in this case, those) times.
Some artists of the "alt-rock" kind, I may have gotten behind, just for the sake of being part of the bigger picture. Or maybe, I just wanted girls to think I was cooler than I was.
Whatever the case, I can't tell you the redemptive qualities of spending money on a CD that an older, cooler indie guy told you to get, not really liking it, then making out with a girl who was impressed with you for having it.
That album, The Afghan Whigs Gentlemen, and after that day, I was a fan.
So I am maybe the most shallow member of my age group, but as it stands, there is a very special place in my heart for the voice of Greg Dulli.
Now we are in 2008, and somehow or another, Mr. Dulli has found his way into the company of Mark Lanegan, who in the last few years has become one of my favorite voices in rock.
Together, they are The Gutter Twins, and their first album Saturnalia is out on a label quite familiar to both gentlemen of leisure, Sub Pop.
The sound this duo creates is a dark, American gothic. Other categories might include dark white boy blues, fire and brimstone, broken down and lonely or maybe the best record of these two men's careers.
Trying to describe it to a friend without sounding like a chump, I found myself saying the words "like Tom Waits singing for Bauhaus deprived of the glam influence."
I cringed at that statement, but try and listen to some of these tracks, such as Idle Hands and try to think otherwise.
Here we are in the dying days of winter, and an album so moody, and hopeless comes out, making us want to scratch away the last flakes of the cold and welcome some sunshine.
But long into the summer, I can still see myself saying this was one of the top albums of the year.
