The Twilight Singers
Blackberry Belle

"I went down that river once when I was a boy. There's a place along the river, a plantation of gardenias or perhaps other flowers, once upon a time. But it seemed that paradise had fallen to earth in the form... in the form of gardenias."

If we plot on an approximate map of the United States of America a mapping of the most significant and influential rock bands of the nineties, along our itinerary, which stretches from Seattle of Grunge to the inevitable New York on the Atlantic Ocean, Cincinnati is a mandatory stop.

Cincinnati is in the Midwest, State of Ohio, and sits on the river of the same name, which is one of the main tributaries of the Mississippi River. The city is one of the most important industrial and commercial centers in the region and, among other things, home to major companies, among which it is impossible not to mention the Chiquita Brands International Inc., a leading giant in the production and marketing of bananas.
Above all, between the late eighties and nineties, Cincinnati is the city of the Afghan Whigs, a band that, despite its name, had too little to do with Central Asia and even less with constitutional monarchies.
Led by the charismatic and essential Greg Dulli, the Afghan Whigs were a formidable combination of four "gentlemen". Sure, classifications aren't my forte, but the production over the years of five more or less significant and excellent works - the last of which, "1965", published by Columbia Records in 1998 - still stands as valid proof and testimony of this group's great capabilities, which would be reductive to define as just "grunge" given the considerable distance of their productions from the mainstays of the genre most beloved by wearers of torn jeans and plaid flannel shirts. In fact, listening to "Congregation" or "Gentlemen", the Afghan Whigs, starting from grunge, which was then more of a cultural phenomenon than a simple musical genre, had landed in their own very personal sound dimension, whose main features are certainly highlighted by the scratchy and incisive guitar of the excellent Rick McCollum, the melodic lines traced by John Curley's bass, and above all, Greg Dulli's ogre-like voice, a gigantic son of a bitch and a habitual smoker - no one has ever seen him without cigarettes - and whiskey drinker. Not to mention, Greg Dulli is more Nick Cave than Neil Young and in the nineties was one of the best writers of wicked, murderous, frenzied, and dark lyrics on the American scene.

Surely Greg Dulli is one of the few who, when grunge died, continued to work successfully and to record good albums. In Italy, he is known to many for his collaboration and friendship with Manuel Agnelli of Afterhours, with whom he toured extensively (both in Italy and the States) and collaborated on the production of the album "Ballate per piccole iene", considered by this writer the best album by the Milanese band alongside "Quello che non c'è". It was also him who facilitated the publication of the American version of the same album, "Ballads for Little Hyenas" (One Little Indian).
A tireless musician and stage animal, after closing his experience with the Afghan Whigs, Greg Dulli created his very own exclusive project, the Twilight Singers. This is indeed a musical project of an "open" nature whose members, except of course for Dulli, the only mastermind, leader, creator, and absolute dictator, are variable and interchangeable - Manuel Agnelli himself collaborated with the Twilight Singers both on record and live on various occasions.
In truth, the fortunes and the quality of the Twilight Singers' productions are variable and not always excellent. This album, "Blackberry Belle", in particular, however, appears to us as decidedly successful and worthy of the best productions of the Afghan Whigs. Certainly, considering Dulli's more recent productions with the Gutter Twins, an interesting yet disappointing project set up with another bigwig Mark Lanegan, it's his best work of the last ten years and, a testament to his great talent and songwriting ability, one of the most interesting albums released from 2000 to date.

"Blackberry Belle" was released in 2003 by One Little Indian. Eleven tracks recorded across the United States with at least ten or twelve different interchangeable musicians and more or less well-known collaborations. Among them, the recurring Mark Lanegan in one of the most beautiful songs written by Greg Dulli, "Number Nine". Finally, but not the end, knowing the character and listening to his works, one cannot and should not be surprised by the tribute to writer Jack London and his work and character "Martin Eden", to which Dulli dedicates and titles the opening song of the album. All this would be enough to convince oneself to let oneself drown and suffocate for forty-five or fifty minutes by the voice and music of one of the best and damned songwriters of the last twenty years, but it is only right to add that to this excellent work the Twilight Singers then follow up with at least another little gem, that "She Loves You" perhaps too underrated and trivially considered just a cover album, which instead is a great display of the interpretative and vocal abilities of good old Greg Dulli, who has perhaps refined his style and innate sense of melody as he's aged. All this while awaiting the release of the next Twilight Singers album, which, based on some information found around the web, should happen in the current year 2010...

There is more to say about the city of Cincinnati. About a decade ago, during one of my travels, I got to know and drink more than a few cans of beer in the company of a not-so-old seadog from the former Yugoslavia. This guy's name is Dubo and in everyday life, he is a chief engineer on cargo and transport ships. Specifically, he handles the maintenance of refrigeration units. Now, for those who know navigation, but even if not, it's easy to understand that being a chief engineer is a job of great responsibility, second only to those of the commander, and an activity for which considerable technical skills, professional experience, and preparation are required. But Dubo is a smart guy, he knows how to do his job, and over the years, he has gained a certain reputation, so much so that he's been working as a technician on Chiquita's commercial ships for at least fifteen years now. We have stayed up late more than once talking about how during the war he outwitted the army and crossed borders to fly to Cincinnati and start working.
Dubo goes back and forth on Chiquita ships that carry bananas from Colombia along the Atlantic coast of the U.S.A. to supply the White House. There's no point in talking to him about the mapping of the United States and the nineties grunge itineraries, also because he probably wouldn't care about any of it, and he hasn't even heard of the Afghan Whigs. Dubo comes from the former Yugoslavia, had war at his doorstep until the other day, and all he knows of the U.S.A. is its dirtier side, that of multinationals operating, trading, and importing from South America. Among many companies, Chiquita Brand is one of the main financers of the ultra-right paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia: an ugly story of arms trafficking and drug trafficking, and of 1,700,000 dollars in cash, all declared in court proceedings to the banana-eating Federal Court of Washington, turned over by the multinational giant to the paramilitaries to "protect the lives of our workers, in a phase when robberies and murders were frequent."
I wanted to talk to Dubo about it, but I only dared to ask him: "Dubo, what about the United States?" He replied: "Monkeys."

Monkeys. I still think about it now and then. I close my eyes and see him, Colonel Kurtz, striding through the gardenia plantation. He's big and thick as a mountain and has his gaze turned toward the infinity of the Ohio River, a moment before being hacked to death by Captain Willard and finally turning his last thought to the Nung River (Mekong), to Cambodia. The United States of America, the Midwest, Cincinnati are then too far, appearing unreachable from the jungle where all those gardenias are just endless banana plantations rotting away.

And then I understand why Dubo stopped eating bananas. To hell with potassium deficiencies.

How does that book end? "And at the very moment he had consciousness of it, he ceased to have consciousness."