Afghan Whigs to Light It Up With First Album in 5 Years, ‘How Do You Burn?’
The Afghan Whigs are gearing up to release their first new studio album in more than 5 years. The group announced that How Do You Burn? will drop on Sept. 9 on Royal Cream/BMG, followed by a fall tour of the U.S. and Europe slated to kick off on album release day in Minneapolis at the Fine Line.
According to a release, the band began work on the follow-up to 2017’s In Spades in Sept. 2020 after the COVID-19 lockdown forced Whigs singer/songwriter Greg Dulli to ditch plans to tour in support of his Random Desire solo album. Because of the pandemic, the group’s members — drummer Patrick Keeler, bassist John Curley, guitarist Jon Skibic and strings player Rick Nelson — all recorded their parts separately; Dulli, Keeler and album co-producer Christopher Torn tracked their parts in California, Curley dialed in from the band’s original hometown of Cincinnati, while Skibic was in New Jersey and Nelson was in New Orleans.
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“Once we got the system down, we started flying,” Dulli said in a statement about the forced remote sessions. The album will also feature one of the last performances from Dulli’s longtime friend and Twilight Singers/Gutter Twins bandmate and former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan, who makes his Whigs debut singing backup vocals on two songs; Dulli noted that Lanegan came up with the album title.
Other guests include vocalist Susan Marshall — who appeared on the band’s 1998 album 1965 — R&B singer Van Hunt, who toured with the band in 2012 and appeared on their 2014 album Do The Beast and singer Marcy Mays, who goes all the way back to the band’s iconic 1993 Gentlemen album.
In a tease of what’s to come, the band dropped the space-themed video for the dreamy single “The Getaway,” in which they perform the wistful track on a dusty desert planet. The band is about to launch their spring run of shows with a gig at the Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which will keep them on the road through a June 1 gig at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles; they will then tour Europe this summer from June 17 until August 10 before embarking on their fall swing; click here to see all their dates.
Watch “The Getaway” video below.
