Much love for Black Love

When it comes to the Afghan Whigs, I'm boringly predictable in rating Gentlemen their best album. The first one I came across and bought, though, was 1996's Black Love, on the recommendation of the Select reviewer who, in lauding Screaming Trees' Dust, also cited Greg Dulli and company's album and Rocket From The Crypt's Scream, Dracula, Scream! as being among the best rock records to come out of the US that year. I wasn't disappointed - it's a dark, majestic album (not un-Leonard Cohen-like, appropriately enough).

To mark its twentieth birthday, the Quietus' Aug Stone has spoken to Dulli about the writing and recording of the album and reappraised it as the band's masterpiece, the moment when their grungey Sub Pop stylings entered into an unlikely but inspired marriage with the soul music they (or Dulli, at least) loved.