The Gutter Twins, Saturnalia

This afternoon’s impulse buy was motivated solely by the fact that I looked over and saw that one half of The Gutter Twins is Greg Dulli, a musician known for his work with The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers. I can’t say what motivated me to pick up this new project’s first release from March 4^th of this year considering what little I’ve heard of Dulli’s earlier bands didn’t excite me in any sense. Maybe it was the decidedly artistic and somewhat unsettling cover image (it’s up and on your right, in case you didn’t notice) that drew me to the bottom shelf of Borders’ new release section that for some anomalous reason keeps moving all over the store.

So, Saturnalia, the first release from the collaboration of Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan, struck me as a bit of a mixed bag. Some songs are folky, some are alternative rock, almost all are dark and moody. Up to the third track, “All Misery/Flowers,” each song had a smokey-vocal and somewhat glum progression. The next track, “The Body,” broke out the acoustic/folk sound, only for the following song, “Idle Hands,” to signal another change in tone, this time to a more rock sound. “Who Will Lead Us?” has more of a folk/country sound to it, a style that I have little love for, but they pull it off. I give them a lot of credit for providing some variety on this album, since I can’t stand a music act that essentially writes and records the same song twelve times and calls it an album.

However, I can’t help but feel a little bored listening to Saturnalia. It’s not that the album is bad; it’s just that it doesn’t do anything that really fires me up and gets me excited to listen to it. The only song that got on my nerves was “Each to Each,” which came off like some weird trip-hop thing that simply doesn’t mesh with the rest of the album. Maybe I’ll learn to like the album as a whole more on subsequent listens.

The album art is also a mixed bag. I really like the front and back cover of the digipak, but several of the inner booklet photos are shot with that grotesque yellow/green filter that makes everything look like a shitty Hollywood horror flick that gets tons of advertising and only mediocre sales. Unfortunately, these are the photos of Dulli and Lanegan, and the filter somewhat mars their devilish good looks. There are no lyrics printed in the booklet, but we do get a listing of all performers that performed for each track.

Overall, I enjoyed Saturnalia. It’s quite competent at what it does and, I will confess, has me curious about what these fine musicians have in store later on, should they continue this project. While it’s not sitting on the top, it’s not deserving of being cast to the shredder. Nothing to run madly to the store to pick up, shoving old ladies and small children into traffic on your way, but definitely worth a listen, even if you aren’t a fan of the prior work of either of these musicians.

The Gutter Twins official website
The Gutter Twins myspace page