(Not) Selling the Drama

Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli, the caterwauling former frontmen of Screaming Trees and the Afghan Whigs, respectively, have both earned a good measure of maturity. Now that they're at least 10 years past their prime, you can hear hard living and the burden of experience in their voices: Lanegan's has taken on some of Tom Waits's nicotine snarl, and Dulli's soulful quiver stumbles off-key a bit more than it did when he was supposed to be the next big thing. Their long-anticipated collaboration might have been an intriguing document about the second acts of America's alt-rock elder statesmen; judging from the album's fairly unrelentingly doomy compositions, they probably have some (not altogether surprising) things to say on the topic. Unfortunately, though, Saturnalia raises the question: At what point does one cease sounding mature and start sounding old?

The rest of my review of the Gutter Twins' Saturnalia is just a hop, skip, and a jump away.