The Afghan Whigs
Big Top Halloween

1986, Halloween night, Cincinnati. Halloween night. In a dark basement, in a smoky and somewhat seedy gay bar, in a county cell sobering up a hangover. Legends, perhaps, but it matters little how, where, or when. What matters is knowing that there, in Cincinnati, Ohio (“just another doom town” the contemporary Wipers might say), at the end of 1986, the Afghan Whigs were born, from the hands of Greg Dulli, Rick McCollum, John Curley, and Steve Earle.

In 1988, "Big Top Halloween" was released, self-produced.
The first song leaves you disarmed, "Here Comes Jesus," a Jesus corrupted by the muck of the streets, drunk and dirty, sways along an aggressive and dense melodic line. This is perhaps the essence of the album, a powerful, raging sound, but never self-serving, precise, disruptive, a perfect chaos on which to set Greg Dulli’s hoarse and unfortunate voice. We are still far from the soul-grunge mix of later episodes, still on a territory more, if you will, "easy," firmly anchored to a post-hardcore tradition rooted in the American provinces of those years. It's as if the Afghan Whigs in this debut, still had to understand themselves, to grasp their incredible potential for innovation.
I will not embark on a track by track that no one feels the need for, but I will just highlight a few other songs that stand out, considering that the average quality is still very high. "Priscilla Wedding's Day," for example, with those two moments of disarming silence before the annihilating scream: "And she's standing/on a chair". Can you see her, this young bride, desolate, watching the void of her life closing between the smudged folds of makeup in her eyes?
"But Listen," one of the more "mature" songs, concerning what the group's artistic trajectory will be, is a piercing and enveloping ballad, with its "babe, babe, babe" that, for once, doesn't sound ingratiating to my ears, with that desolate concession: "You can kiss me on my lips/or you can kiss me on my ass".
A new masterpiece is "Life In A Day," very close to the group's more characteristic sound, with Dulli’s broken voice dragging the rhythm section into the abyss, a sort of "measured" experiment, compared to violent progressions like "Big Top Halloween" or "Scream"; like a warning to the listener not to mistake them for just another post-hardcore band, all fury and no clarity.
"Greek Is Extra," is the final slash, it explodes and tears the last rungs of a ladder overlooking the void.

Let's be clear: it is not a perfect album, far from it, indeed, to me, it ranks well below the next three albums (at least those for sure, about "Black Love" and 1965 I have some doubts), at the same time I didn't find it that raw and immature album that many critics describe, but rather a concentration of fury and expressiveness that has yet to find the best way to channel itself, but still offers wonderful moments.