Today, The Afghan Whigs release “A Line Of Shots,” the band’s third single from their upcoming album How Do You Burn? set for release on September 9, 2022 via Royal Cream/BMG.
After feeling the audience reaction to the song on their May 2022 U.S. tour, it was clear the single needed its moment in the sun. The band’s new album has made Most Anticipated Albums of Summer 2022 lists at Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan and Forbes.
Fans can pre-order How Do You Burn? HERE and listen to “A Line Of Shots” HERE
In support of How Do You Burn?, The Afghan Whigs will embark on a short summer European run beginning this weekend in the UK. A more extensive tour gets underway this fall in the United States and Europe, kicking off in Minneapolis on September 9th at the Fine Line and ending at the newly reopened KOKO in London on November 6th. Tickets are on sale now for all shows.
How Do You Burn?, their ninth album overall and following on from the brace of widely acclaimed records they’ve made previously since re-grouping in 2012, Do to the Beast (2014) and In Spades (2017). How Do You Burn? picks up the baton laid down by each of those records and runs it to the horizon. Work on it began in September 2020 – the COVID pandemic having forced Whigs frontman/songwriter Greg Dulli to abandon plans to tour his highly praised solo album, ‘Random Desire’ – and continued over the next 14 months.
The global pandemic dictated also that the band record largely apart from, and in different locations to, each other: Dulli, his co-producer Christopher Thorn and drummer Patrick Keeler together in California; bassist John Curley, guitarist Jon Skibic and strings man Rick Nelson laying down and engineering their own parts in Cincinnati, New Jersey and New Orleans, respectively.
For his supporting cast, Dulli called upon several serial collaborators including the late Mark Lanegan, who was a regular in Dulli’s Twilight Singers, a partner in The Gutter Twins and a close friend. Lanegan makes his Afghan Whigs debut singing backup vocals on two tracks. “It was Mark who named the album,” Dulli remarked.
Susan Marshall, who sang on the Whigs album 1965, returns to the fray for “Catch A Colt,” one of the album’s standout tracks, loose-limbed like Some Girls-era Rolling Stones and with the liquid polyrhythms of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk.
The multi-talented Van Hunt, who toured with the Whigs in 2012 and guested on Do to the Beast, brings his stacked-up, wall-of-sound vocals to both the plunging, voodoo-blues of “Jyja” and the audacious “Take Me There”, transforming the latter, says Dulli, “into this feral gospel song. We sing really well together, but what Van does production-wise… it’s unrelenting.”
Then there’s Marcy Mays, lead vocalist on ‘My Curse’, the torch-song highlight of 1993’s seminal ‘Gentlemen’ album, reprising her role here on the celestial “Domino and Jimmy”, playing Stevie Nicks to Dulli’s Lindsey Buckingham. “I wrote that song with Marcy in mind,” says Dulli. “No-one sounds like her; she’s got an incredibly unique, emotional and evocative voice.”
The Afghan Whigs – Dulli, Curley, Nelson, Keeler and with Christopher Thorn now joining the band on guitar – will take How Do You Burn? out on the road all year long. Beyond that, says Dulli, their future is gloriously wide open.
UK TOUR DATES
23rd July – Brighton, Concorde 2
24th July – Suffolk, Latitude Festival
4th Nov – Manchester, Cathedral
5th Nov – Glasgow, St. Lukes
6th Nov – London, KOKO
How Do You Burn? Track List
1. I’ll Make You See God
2. The Getaway
3. Catch A Colt
4. Jyja
5. Please, Baby, Please
6. A Line Of Shots
7. Domino and Jimmy
8.Take Me There
9. Concealer
10. In Flames
