Stereogum » The Gutter Twins

Mark Lanegan Covers Afghan Whigs

brandon — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:18:39 +0000

Lanegan does a properly slow, soulful, kind of blue take of one of his Gutter Twin’s classic Congregation songs “Tonight.” His go at the 1992 come-on’s from the forthcoming Summer’s Kiss: A Tribute To The Afghan Whigs, which includes a baker’s dozen of Whigs takes via Joseph Arthur, My Jerusalem, Zykos, etc. The idea for it started in the summer of 2006 when the Afghan Whigs fan site Summerkiss put out an open call for covers of Whigs songs and folks responded. You can hear snippets of the selected 13 (of nearly 100 submitted) at the Summerkiss label’s website, but first you can hear Lanegan in his smokey entirety here. (By the by, does Sam Holden’s photo for the tribute’s cover look at all familiar, gentlemen?)

New Gutter Twins Video – “Idle Hands”

amrit — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:42:59 +0000

Props to the Gutter Twins for harnessing the inherent “this makes me want to run around and blow shit up”-iosity (technical music term, guys) of “Idle Hands” in this video featuring nothing more than kids running around, blowing shit up. OK, that’s not true. They also use flame throwers to light-on-fire shit up. There’s that old figure of speech: an idle mind is the devil’s playground. Then there’s the literal take: idle hands are the devil’s playground.

Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan Talk Internet Music Writing And “Snarky Hipsterism”

amrit — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:12:47 +0000

In an interview with Pitchfork today, alt-rock heroes Greg and Mark spend some time talking about the genre-sweeping stable of artists at Sub Pop, often home to the both crooners’ endeavors, with and sans bands, and now place of residence for the duo’s rather kick-ass Gutter Twins project. Dulli takes the lead here, confessing to simply ‘liking what he likes’ (“I don’t really associate [my preferences] with towns or movements of label”), before talking about certain sites’ need to be FIRST, backlash, and be snarky. But at least he’s not talking about Stereogum.

GREG DULLI: I listen to new music frequently. Jeff Klein, he plays keyboards in our group, he’s like 29 or 30, he turned me on to Pitchfork and Stereogum and stuff like that. I don’t really read much music stuff but I was aware of this kind of– and I’m going to get killed for saying this– snarky hipsterism, exclusionary thing. It’s like, “We listen to bands that haven’t even formed yet.” That punk rock thing of trying to be cool…

OK, so maybe he is talking about Stereogum.

PITCHFORK: Well, that attitude certainly isn’t anything new, it’s not like the internet invented music snobbery…

GD: …and as soon as some other dude likes what you like you can’t like it anymore. You have to move to the next thing. I just think that’s kind of– and I’m not saying your site or the site you work for is like that– but that’s always a thing that repelled me. I mean I can certainly see a band like Nirvana, like when they started having to play to the kind of guys that beat them up in high school– that was probably shocking. But you make music to move people and you don’t get to pick who you move. You just don’t. It’s exclusionary and elitist and I just never felt that way about music, of all things. The great unifier.

At this point you realize Mark’s been biting his tongue, so he finally gets to drop some knowledge…

P4K: Mark, do you have anything to add?

New Gutter Twins Video – “All Misery / Flowers”

amrit — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:54:08 +0000

The initial push for Dulli and Lanegan’s Gutter Twins project revolved around shit-kicking love anthem (yes, there is such a thing) “Idle Hands,” with the MP3 and the Letterman performance and the so on. Now the focus shifts to the weather-beaten oddity “All Misery / Flowers,” and as that slash suggests, there are two things going on here: Greg, Mark, and some hula hoops and dancer in a dark cabaret club, and a funeral procession in New Orleans. Nobody said it had to make sense.

The Gutter Twins Offer Letterman Their “Idle Hands”

amrit — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:31:18 +0000

Dave shows his soft spot for good rock here and there, so we weren’t surprised to see him tip his cap to Dulli and Lanegan’s rough and road-grizzled, shit-kicking tough-love anthem “Idle Hands” last night. The so-called ‘Satanic Everly Brothers’ floored us with the song a few months ago, and here they remind us and everyone else too lazy to have seen them in a rock club near you why vets do it better. It sounds like the tune kicks in with pre-recorded shouts at the devil, but from there the swarthy and shadowy come-ons are live and tight.

Gutter Twins Cover Massive Attack, Jose Gonzalez In Saturnalia Tour Kickoff

brandon — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:30:02 +0000

Over the years, across incarnations, Greg Dulli’s done great covers — from Björk to TLC to the Beatles and back. At the Gutters Twins tour launch at Bowery Ballroom on Thursday, he and Mark Lanegan tore into Massive Attack’s “Live With Me” (which they covered together previously, on Dulli project Twilight Singers’ Stitch In Time EP) and José González’s “Down The Line,” which is ready to be watched below. Just don’t let the darkness eat you up.

The over-excited guy close to the video mic is funny. His “I never heard this song … it sounds pretty” at the beginning, ecstatic yowl at the end. A convert. If you’d prefer the song without those interjections, check back to this version. We’ve been listening to and digging Saturnalia — including the dark, rocking “Idle Hands” — so it’s good to see they rocked some songs off of that, too. The rest of the set list and links to additional vids after the jump.

New Gutter Twins – “Idle Hands”

Stereogum — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:29:58 +0000

That’s it, we’re calling it: Hands are the indie appendages of 2008. Destroyer showed off his “Foam” ones in an advance listen of this March’s Trouble In Dreams, now the mighty Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli answer the call with a handy track of their own. Of course their turn’s about as dark as you’d expect from the pairing that Dulli billed “the Satanic Everly Brothers” (idle minds being the devil’s playground and all that). It’s the day’s must grab, churning swarthy, sexy evil from nasty sounding guitars, sustained faux-string tones, and two of the greatest world weary alt-rock croons … ever. Anybody else ever start fiending for smokes and a whiskey after hearing these guys? Shake “Hands” at MySpace (free download).

The Gutter Twins’ debut Saturnalia is out 3/4 on Sub Pop, including contributions from Petra Hayden, Martina Topley-Bird, Troy van Leeuwen, and Joseph Arthur. Some tour dates for ya after the jump. Last we saw the Greg and Mark together live, Lanegan was guesting with the Twilight Singers in Oslo. Now we’re thinking it may be time to pay some respects again.

[Lanegan/Dulli pic from Øyafestivalen '06]