She Loves You

How is it that this album is only arriving now? Greg Dulli has always been a smoke-eyed interpreter, the whispers of others' songs drifting through his own like ghosts in a cemetery. Nevertheless, She Loves You is his first proper covers album, performed with the aid of his Twilight Singers collective. The songs here often found their way into the group's tours for Blackberry Belle; this probably accounts for how much they resemble Twilight material, even as the original shape is maintained. She Loves You opens with the voices of three women. Dulli approaches Hope Sandoval's "Feeling of Gaze," Martina Topley-Bird's "Too Tough to Die," and especially Bjork's "Hyperballad" with the same measured, nearly sultry intensity. This is music made from black sheets of silk. Dulli sounds absolutely tortured on "Strange Fruit"; with Mark Lanegan growling dourly in the other speaker, the song becomes a clawing drunk of burning flesh and sublimity. The sunnier Mary J. Blige gem "Real Love" is guided by a genius blend of melancholy bassline and hopeful, keening guitar, while "A Love Supreme" and Marvin Gaye's "Please Stay (Once You Go Away)" are performed in a dusky, ecstatic suite format, Rhodes tingeing the ends of the lines and Jon Skibic's electric guitar tracing undulating wah-wah curves in the folds of the bed sheets. Yow, it's getting hot in here. There was never any doubt, but She Loves You proves it anyway -- Greg Dulli is our collective id. ~ Johnny Loftus