The Afghan Whigs
Uptown Avondale - 12" e.p.

And I still remember them, as if it were today, the stunned faces of those young people back then, those with long hair covering even beyond their shoulders the checkered heavy flannel shirts, those with jeans torn at the knee, with unlaced Doc Marten's and belts symbolically inscribed with "Menefrego!" (luckily in English, nevermind).

You don't start a composition with a conjunction, they already teach you that in elementary school. Why, then, is it permissible for four hoodlums from Cincinnati, infatuated with sex and rock, at the end of the Eighties quartered in Seattle - and where else? - recording for Sub Pop - and for who else? - ready to ride the multimillion-dollar wave of (enough, it's time to say that word...) "grunge", to release at the peak of it all a small disc of four tracks plus a remix entirely composed of soul covers? Soul? And what had soul to do with it? Wasn't this apostasy? Who did they think they were, especially him, that singer-guitarist, an arrogant handsome dark one with a nose crooked like a professional boxer?

After all, that Greg Dulli - him, the handsome dark one of Greek origin - had had a sentimental education not exactly conventional should have been clear even before the release of "Uptown Avondale". How many of his contemporaries would have thought of borrowing from the at least neglected repertoire of Jesus Christ Superstar a track like The Temple and transforming it into a threatening hard-boogie ride that owes everything to Alice Cooper that it doesn't owe to Aerosmith? And then why be surprised, if Dulli candidly confessed to growing up in a "mixed" neighborhood listening to massive doses of black music, declaring also without mincing words that "soul is a much more emotional music than most rock. And having become an emotional singer, I drew more influences from soul than rock"?

Here then, at the end of 1992, the incident: soul dramatically bursts into the indie-rock of stars and stripes. Certainties that waver. The sounds of the Seattle factory placed at the service of the music of the soul, as no one there or elsewhere had ever dared to do. Result: fifteen minutes of marvels. And it's not that, in some cases, the raw material was of any super precious alloy. Listen to the Freda Payne of Band of gold and compare it to the version present here, where ancestral drums, guitars bleeding at the edge of distortion, and the usual vein-swollen singing of Dulli seem like the introduction to a voodoo ritual more than a little northern-soul hit dancer. Nor can it be any less surprising the transformation of the childlike cheerful chirp of Diana Ross and "supreme" company into a Come see about me that Our comrades drain of all the typical sugary pop of Motown, instead granting it accents and intensity that, I think, might have made Michael Stipe and Peter Buck green with envy. Not even when confronting a giant like Al Green do Dulli and company fail to stand their ground. The Beware of the Reverend, though deprived of the languid interpretations and a rhythm and blues orchestration that could shake one’s nerves and pulses (Willie Mitchell and the Hi sound, or the Golden Age of Memphis soul), transforms into an emotional tour de force capable of linking Dylan with Neil Young like rarely happened, razor-sharp guitars that find their edge on the soul and a singing that, instead of compressing, seems to find joy in erupting with the pain of living. Finally, three minutes and a little more of immensity that, even if not autographed (Owens-Frazier, a gift to that intimate champion named Percy Mayfield), you have still permanently earned a place of honor: True love travels on a gravel road is not a simple song, it is a shamanic ritual, a nocturnal dialogue by Native Americans with the spirits of the Earth, almost as if to reconnect all the races that trod American soil, a brushed drum that is a breath of life, and a chanting guitar (now I must mention you, great Rick McCollum, may you always be praised) that with its tremolo seems to speak not to us poor creatures but to the elements. In short, the Bad Seeds at their best, but better. Truly astounding.

Therefore, I remember the faces of those young people. Oh, how I remember them. Because above all, I remember mine well.

Like a formidable Prophet, raising the index finger, Dulli then seemed truly an envoy of some Superior Entity, commissioned by it to admonish rock saying: "Remember you were born black and black you must return". Let Cam and Japheth be divided no more. Because yes, even more than ever this was, is, and will remain soul. Even when they call it grunge.