By the end of Greg Dulli's second set of the night at The Triple Door, there were an atypically low number of dead bodies that had sung about by the Cincinnati songwriter. But while the fictional body count remained low, there were a few overeager audience members that might have pushed up the number of real life casualties if they hadn't calmed themselves down. "The first thing to know about a Greg Dulli show is that Greg Dulli picks the songs," said the Afghan Whigs frontman to a particularly loud and repeated request for "Algiers". "I'll sing the hell out of that one next year, but for now, we play what I want to play." If it were anyone else, the response might have seemed a little out of character, but it was just another manifestation of the same defiant, singular attitude that has made Dulli's catalog unlike that of anyone else's in his generation. Backed by a more compact and quieter band than he's been in some time, Dulli's persona was front and center, only outdone by the unmistakable songbook that he's created over the past two-and-a-half decades.
Preceded onstage by the attitudinally-similar "literary stylist" (read: poet/comedian/musician) Derrick Brown ("A lot of you came for 'emotionally unavailable' – that's about to change", he quipped at the beginning of his unpredictable, yet chaotically cohesive set), Dulli was backed only by bassist Rio Serra and his fellow Afghan Whigs Dave Rosser and Rick Nelson. It's fair to say that any given song in Dulli's work with Afghan Whigs easily falls into the categories of "Blame", "Denial", and "Betrayal", and while his non-Whigs catalog still primarily explores characters who are victims of love affairs gone wrong, they're often less about the emotional aftermath than the forensic one. It was this body of work that made up the majority of the setlist at the Triple Door, completely eschewing the punk- and soul-damaged rock of his main band in favor of focusing on Dulli's 2000s-era work, primarily with the Twilight Singers. And while Dulli's Twilight Singers work with might not have gotten as much attention upon its release as the notoriously-overlooked Whigs' albums did, they've aged just as well, perhaps even better, because they tell the story of what happened when the man behind the baleful characters of Gentlemen and Black Love started writing more directly about himself, and it's those songs have been the cornerstones of this tour's setlists.
The two albums that made up the majority of the setlist are likely the most significant post-Whigs albums in Dulli's catalog: 2003's Blackberry Belle and 2006's Powder Burns, the former written after the death of Dulli's close friend Ted Demme and the latter written after Dulli achieved sobriety. In those albums, Dulli tapped into his own personal grief, rather than his antihero fantasies, to generate a potently dark undercurrent, and when songs like "Martin Eden", "Bonnie Brae", "There's Been an Accident", and "Teenage Wristband" were presented in a more stripped-down format, they lost none of their urgency. Likewise, the handful of Whigs songs ("It Kills", "Can Rova") that made the setlist played to a similar strength – only the rousing, guitar-heavy versions of "Summer's Kiss" and "If I Were Going" capitalized on Rosser and Dulli's interplay. A pair of tunes from Amber Headlights, Dulli's only solo release to date, made rare appearances, and in classic Dulli fashion, some choice covers also peppered the set.
The first of the two covers, "Paper Thin Hotel" by Leonard Cohen, was straightforward, not unlike the Canadian bard's own musical style. But the second cover, a set-closing rendition of David Bowie's "Modern Love", spoke nearly as much about Dulli's lengthy and consistent career as the prior ninety minutes of music had. Alone onstage with only his acoustic guitar, Dulli tapped into his soul man influences and asked the crowd to "give it up for the man who had sang 45 songs across two shows tonight", but before long, he was back in the same pensive mood he'd been in for most of the night. Many people have paid tribute to David Bowie this year and even more will as it passes, but many of them will go for one of the Thin White Duke's more iconic or affecting songs – "Heroes", "Space Oddity", "Life on Mars?". Dulli, almost comically on-brand, went for the one that Bowie wrote about trying to find love in a world while wrestling with life and God and delivered it in a nearly dirge-like fashion that's a far cry from the kinetic kick-snap of the original arrangement. But regardless of who wrote the song, a meditation on love and death and how they fight with each other until the very end is the most quintessential Greg Dulli way to end a Greg Dulli concert. So when he returns to explore those two ideas more later this year with a new Whigs album in tow, there's a good chance he'll do the same thing. It'll be louder that time, but no less fascinating. (And if he's a man of his word, he'll sing the hell out of "Algiers".)
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