The Twilight Singers - A Stitch in Time

Genre rock Publisher One Little Indian External Links Official The Twilight Singers Website Official One Little Indian Website

I'll be blunt here. My initial listen of A Stitch in Time was more than a little unsatisfying. The disc ended, was popped from the player, and thrown into the passenger seat without hesitation. It sounded like a typical set of Twilight Singers songs and that initial assessment left me a little disappointed. I've grown to love Greg Dulli's music over the past few years, but this seemed so damn predictable that it was destined to create frustration. Dulli developed the Twilight Singers formula back in the 90s, during his stint as captain of the Afghan Whigs and it has remained to this day, with the current EP staying true to form. It's dark, yearning, and a little abrasive, there's a drum machine track, and of course Mark Lanegan, of Screaming Trees fame, pops up. Whether you want to admit it or not, that pretty much sums up a great majority of Twilight Singers records.

With repeated listens though, these increasingly common elements start to meld, yet again, and expose this as a consistent little stop gap for the group. Lanegan provides a matter of fact reading of Massive Attack's "Live With Me" to get the ball rolling, right into a guest appearance by another Dulli sidekick, Joseph Arthur, on the melodic "Sublime." The songwriting is strong throughout the five tracks and avoids the "b-side feel" that often plagues intermediate releases.

The real surprise doesn't reveal itself until the very end, however. Dulli's ability to pen a heart tugging ballad has already been proven, but I'm not sure he has produced one quite as wonderful as "The Lure Would Prove Too Much." The disc is wrapped up with this string soaked confessional, peppered with snippets of a telephone conversation, which include the all too familiar inquiry of voice prompt systems worldwide: "are you still there?" Somehow, in the context of the song, it manages to be moving, rather than infuriating. It's funny how Dulli has the ability to mine the same territory over and over, without sounding stale.