Feel his pain

"Congregation to me is the key record of our catalog, because that's the one where we sort of grew up and became comfortable putting some R&B influences in our music," Dulli explains. "Up in It was our first record for Sub Pop, and I kind of overcompensated to make it sound a little more Sub Pop in retrospect. I mean, there's moments on that record that, you know, you're like, 'Oh, yeah, OK--I see where they are,' but Congregation to me was when I started to kind of show my hand a little bit.

"Congregation was the..." Dulli pauses a few seconds, then reveals the motivation behind the record as only someone obsessed with the man behind the music can. "I had never been in a serious relationship before that, and I was in one all of a sudden, and I was confused and...uh...I didn't know why I was doing the things I was doing. And all of a sudden, you know, the shit hit the fan, and I started...you know, it started to pour out of me."

By 1993, Dulli had found he couldn't stop it. That year, Gentlemen was released, and a star was born...at least in Greg Dulli's mirror. Somewhere between there and here, he cut his hair and purchased a silk wardrobe befitting his desire to be the sexiest, most desirable motherfucker in the room--and, somehow, also the biggest asshole. Really, he didn't see much of a difference. Gentlemen was the most intense, troublesome record released that year, and by far the best thing the Whigs had ever done. Suddenly, the music vibrated, pleading and pushing all at once. It wore a black heart on its custom-fit sleeve; Gentlemen was a nasty record, a masterpiece that had no right to exist--because listening to it was so thrilling and damned uncomfortable.

Dulli had decided to dive head-first into the mess that he claims was his life at the time the record was made--the failing relationships, the storm that occurs when lust turns to love disintegrates into hate. Gentlemen is at once apologetic and defiant, a caress and a slap: Only Dulli would title a song "Be Sweet" and then put in the lyric "She wants love, and I still want to fuck," then insist "I'm ashamed." Featuring Scrawl's Marcy Mays singing lead on one song ("My Curse," where she begs her love to "hurt me, baby"), Gentlemen was the most obscene sort of concept album, putting you smack in the center of a relationship as it consumed and destroyed its participants.

"Do you know the record Here, My Dear by Marvin Gaye?" Dulli asks, referring to Gaye's tortured, frightening 1978 album about his divorce from Anna Gordy. "That and Pink Floyd's The Wall--they're two different records, but they're both very kind of confessional. Those were the two albums that I leaned on the most as far as how to make Gentlemen. I was on a dark lyric juggernaut...I was just, uh, beside myself with sadness and self-loathing on that record. I can say that now, 'cause it's five years later since I wrote it. I even told the band, 'Let me just get this over with, and we'll let the record company reject it, and I'll come up with somethin' a little catchier,' but it ended up being, you know, the one they all still talk about, soooo..." He trails off, laughing.

Black Love, released three years later, was even darker, more degenerate, beginning with the lines: "Tonight I say goodbye to everybody who loves me." From there, it's only downhill, culminating in the song "Faded," which ends the record by uttering, "It's gonna kill you." Dulli says now Black Love was written as a result of the depression that physically hurt him so deeply that he often felt like a knife was stuck in his gut. Leave it to him to conjure such a romantic, noir cliche.

But 1965 is the bright, shiny side of the same coin--a R&B record made by the greatest bar band in the world, sans the poor-poor-me tragedy that dripped all over its two predecessors. It owes more to the 1992 EP Uptown Avondale, which featured straight-faced Motown and Al Green covers, than to Gentlemen or Black Love. With its horny-horns, black-up singers, come-on-come-on whispers, and Marvin Gaye references to gettin' it on, 1965 does away with the regret and hate and dives straight into the satin sheets, coming up for air only when it's time for the post-doin'-it smoke. Goodbye, self-hate; hello, luuuuv. "I wanna getcha hiiiiiiiiiiiigh," Dulli sings, like a man for whom therapy did some good.

Or maybe it's all an act in the end, a put-on for his amusement--the whole "angst merchant" routine he likes to tell interviewers. After all, his shtick makes for good copy, good music, and the occasional good laugh. One need look no further than the second song on 1965--"Crazy," heheheh--to discover that maybe Dulli doesn't love himself and hate himself as much as you think. "There ain't nuthin' wrong with me / If I use it to get me some sympathy," he sings in that I've-got-a-secret voice of his. Listen close enough, and you'll find that maybe the liar's finally telling the truth. Fact is, Greg Dulli will say anything to get you to love him.