The Afghan Whigs - In Spades - Music & Performance - CD

2017 release from the alt-rockers. From it's evocative cover art to the troubled spirits haunting it's halls, In Spades casts a spell that challenges the listener to unpack it's dark metaphors and spectral imagery. On the one hand, In Spades is as quintessentially Afghan Whigs as anything the group has ever done - fulfilling it's original mandate to explore the missing link between howling Midwestern punk like Die Kreuzen and Hﾁsker Dﾁ, The Temptations' psychedelic soul symphonies, and the expansive hard rock tapestries of Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At the same time, this album continues to push beyond anything in the Whigs' previous repertoire - another trademark, along with the explosive group dynamic captured on the recording. Indeed, the chemistry of the lineup - Dulli, guitarists Dave Rosser and Jon Skibic, drummer Patrick Keeler, multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson, and Whigs co-founder/bassist John Curley - set the tone for In Spades' creation. When it came to follow up the band's triumphant return to recording - Do To the Beast (2014), which was the band's first ever Top 40 album, - the die was cast. "This is the first time since Black Love [the Whigs' 1996 noir masterpiece] that we've done a full-blown band album," Dulli says. The joys, sorrows, and upheavals of innocence and experience echo throughout In Spades: it powerfully documents where The Afghan Whigs have been, and where they might go next.