Discover releases, reviews, credits, songs, and more about The Afghan Whigs - 1965 at Discogs. Complete your The Afghan Whigs collection. The Afghan Whigs have set an October 13 release date for its new album, '1965,' its first album since parting ways with Elektra Records, which handled the band's two albums.

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The Afghan Whigs’ three albums leading up to this one, Congregation, Gentlemen, and Black Love, are rightly hailed as classic examples of their time and have held up as the years have progressed. While Gentlemen is rightfully lauded as a highly influential record, upon its release, 1965 felt like it was the continuation of that line and that it would send the band stratospheric. Singer Greg Dulli, always a writer with a cinematic, widescreen vision for his records (all their albums are credited as being “shot on location” in their sleeve notes), said at the time of its release he was working to a new theme. Following the deep seam of guilt on Gentlemen and revenge on Black Love, the Whigs were taking a “backseat to lust” on 1965, and from the opening sound of a match striking and the whispered words of “I’ll meet you in the bathroom…” this is a party album with a difference.

1965 The Afghan Whigs Rar Full

1965 The Afghan Whigs Rarest

While it has a cocksure strut and a southern charm, it also covers the life of played out party people (“Uptown Again”) and shows us what can happen when the substances get too much (“Omerta”). And yet, despite all of the potential downers on display, the band sneaks all of this by you with some of the most alive, groove-filled music of their career. You will dance your behind off to the bar-room piano of “Somethin’ Hot,” and the groove of “66” suggests that OutKast were listening when they wrote “Hey Ya!.” The album pivots around “Citi Soliel” and its use of steel drums as Dulli screams, “Ooh child, I’ll meet you child, on the sunny side.” However, after that you are taken towards the darker end of town… it gets later and the party has thinned out to just two people. “Slide Song,” “John The Baptist” and the downright lascivious “Neglekted” – with its refrain of “Cos when I do what I’m gonna do to you, make sure you remember my name” – show that the people involved have just one thing on their minds. The lust has truly arrived.

The album closers “Omerta” and “The Vampire Lanois” slow things down further and show you the after effects of a long party; the morning after the morning after. You can hear the guilt creeping back in through lines like “if I have love, then I hide it, and the people that I hide it from have helped to deny that it’s not enough to show you care.” Both of these songs in particular show off the talents of the core members of the band, John Curley’s taut bass and Rick McCollum acetylene sharp guitar lines. 1965 seemed like a fitting way to end a career, although we didn’t know it at the time.

Commendations

1965 was rightly hailed as a triumph upon its release and the band went on tour taking a huge cast of supporting musicians, including the wonderful Susan Marshall on backing vocals. It’s her vocals that bring opener “Somethin’ Hot” to life. The album truly takes off at “Citi Soliel,” but it’s the twisted funk of “John The Baptist” and slinky soul of “Neglekted” that make this album stand out. An honorable nod must also go to “The Slide Song” for its beautiful crescendo.

Next Steps

After 1965 the band parted on the best of terms and at the peak of their career. The recent spate of Afghan Whigs gigs have been triumphant, celebratory affairs, with all three core band members more than contributing. New material has been mooted, and it’s impossible to say that it won’t be up to the same standards as the run that culminated in 1965. After 1965, Dulli formed The Twilight Singers and released five studio albums and a joint album as the Gutter Twins with Mark Lanegan. Guitarist Rick McCollum formed Moon Maan, and bassist John Curley worked in his own studio, Ultrasuede. They have been playing again as the Afghan Whigs since May 2012, and have also released three covers as free downloads: “Teenie Marie Lyons,” “See and Don’t See,” and Frank Ocean’s “Love Crimes.”

Reviewer: Mat Riches

IRC: Nick Amies

The Afghan Whigs Facebook

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1965 The Afghan Whigs Rar Album

Never trust a man who says he knows what the meaning of life is. That is unknowable, and maybe nonexistent. However, I know damn well what the point of life is: to procreate, and in so doing, fornicate. To the best of our scientific knowledge, six billion years of evolution has gone into making all of us, men and women, want to bang. Often. The urge to fuck is one of the most basic, relatable mental processes in the world, and one intimately related to love — the subject of more songs and poems than any other subject (my money is on war in second place, and just plain physical sex as a close third). And yet, somewhere along the way, it became un-hip to write music about sex, at least too overtly.
But let’s cut away the bullshit. There is nothing wrong with cock-rock. Actually, cock-rock is kind of awesome. Enter the Afghan Whigs. The Cincinnati four-piece came into their own in the late ’80s and early ’90s alternative scene, a collective of bands that rejected the cock-rock ethos, and for good reason: The ’80s hair metal scene had taken sexual rock and roll to such extremes as to render it absurd. Unlike their contemporaries, though, the Afghan Whigs gloried in bacchanalia, making them unique among the bands they often shared labels with. On the other hand, their approach to cock-rock was distinct from the woman-devouring bands that preceded them.
You could call them progressive. The Afghan Whigs, and especially guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Greg Dulli, understood that even the most Caucasian rock is at its heart derived from African American music, and sexuality is an intimate part of that — they don’t call him Elvis the Pelvis without good reason. So while rock bands emulated rock bands, Dulli took things back to basics, taking his cues from soul and R&B music. While Kurt Cobain re-branded the hellish blues torture of Robert Johnson, Dulli glorified the melancholy-but-libidinous tunes of the Supremes, Barry White, and even TLC, albeit with a darker twist. Instead of blue-eyed soul, let’s call it black-hearted.
It was, and remains, a unique take on rock music, and today, even though the Afghan Whigs enjoyed some modest commercial success, their influence on modern rock and pop music is less than apparent. Bands like Interpol and Jimmy Eat World have earned the occasional comparison, but don’t really sound like the Afghan Whigs (the sole exception that comes to mind is Maroon 5’s critically underrated debut album Songs About Jane — had they continued in the soul-rock vein, I might still buy their albums).
When I counted down Josh Homme’s albums for Stereogum, a commenter said, “In a perfect world, Queens [Of The Stone Age] and Afghan Whigs would have conquered the charts instead of Creed and Nickelback.” I’m inclined to agree with him — and a little surprised that the Whigs never reached arena status. They have the songs, the hooks, and later in their career, the production value. Cynically, it might have something to do with the band’s aesthetic (there was a classic fanzine called “Fat Greg Dulli,” if that tells you something). But more realistically, I think their uniqueness became a detriment. Standing out in a crowd is good for a job search, but bad for rock superstardom, leaving the Whigs in a genre of solitary confinement.
Of course, the Whigs were born when Greg Dulli (supposedly) met lead guitarist Rick McCollum in an Athens, OH jail cell, after being taken into custody for disorderly conduct. The band assumed regular operations in Cincinnati, which begs the question: What exactly were the two doing in Athens? The same thing everyone does in Athens: getting drunk and disorderly (as proof, research the Ohio University’s Halloween celebration festivities). As a fellow Ohioan I can attest, this state breeds a special kind of asshole. We’re the state that keeps racist baseball mascots long past their expiration dates, and that glorifies its Big 10 football team’s abi