The Gutter Twins:

A Reach Towards the Light for a Match Made in Hell

By: Steven Waye

The privilege of writing a piece on The Gutter Twins’ “Saturnalia” is, for me, the critical equivalent of handing out a lifetime achievement award. The aptly named Gutter Twins, Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli, have toiled in parallel obscurity for a decade and a half, cranking out some of the most inventive and visceral music from that period. Dulli’s quartet Afghan Whigs, described by Rolling Stone as spending “the bulk of their career on the brink of stardom” and Lanegan’s band Screaming Trees, the forgotten sons of the Seattle grunge scene, are shunted aside in discussions about the greatest rock acts of the 90’s. To this day they are prohibitively overshadowed by bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains, despite producing catalogues that have aged as well or better than their contemporaries. They are the neglected younger brothers of jaded flannel rock, the Kevin Dillons of the alternative scene.

However, in my eyes these are two of the greatest frontmen of their era, and the longevity of their careers, if nothing else, supports my claim. They have managed admirably to continue to make compelling music leading up to this 2008 release without tragically self-destructing (Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain) or becoming a flickering echo of their own fading stars (Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder). While admittedly uneven, “Saturnalia” highlights the complimentary creative prowess of two backburner legends in the twilight of their careers, and when Lanegan’s smoky growl tangos with Dulli’s fire-breathing wail, the result is some truly stunning black magic.

The opening track, “The Stations,” sets the tone, with Lanegan crooning, “O mama, ain’t no time to fall to pieces,” with every ounce of bitterness his pack-a-day baritone can muster. The guitars and strings wail in the background as Dulli joins Lanegan for the chorus, lamenting a salvation that for them only serves as a consistent reminder of what they always pined for but never tasted: “They say the rapture’s coming/they say he’ll be here soon/right now there’s demons crawling all around my room/They he lives within us/They say for me he died/And now I hear his footsteps almost every night.”

Throughout the album, the musical accompaniment serves only as an atmospheric backdrop for two men struggling to make sense of a life of burgeoning disappointment, as a movie score might serve to heighten the emotional intensity of a tragic dialogue. Yet, strangely “Saturnalia” finds Dulli and Lanegan closer to anything resembling peace than we have ever heard in any of their previous endeavors. The tension and scrappiness that defined their output to this point is still there, but the interplay between Dulli and Lanegan reveals a ruggedly beautiful synchronicity that led Dulli to dub them “the Satanic Everly Brothers.” “We had to become the Gutter Twins, because that’s how we were perceived,” Dulli quips. This album captures the sound of two weathered men working together in world-weary harmony, a kinship of the kicked-around.

Though “Saturnalia” recycles many of its best moments, it has plenty of them. “The Body” is an ethereal ballad that sounds like something “Adore”-era Billy Corgan may have penned if he had the vocal chops to pull it off. Martina Topley-Bird’s guest vocals make the song really take off and transport the listener. “Who Will Lead Us” is a hauntingly dark gospel-tinged ballad that showcases Lanegan’s more wistful side. “Idle Hands” sounds like a dance party in Hades, and you can almost hear the ground shaking as Lanegan croaks “With idle hands/there’s nothing I can do/but be the Devil’s plaything, baby/and know that I’ve been used.” When Dulli accompanies him for the chorus, it scares the bejeezus out of me in the most beautiful way imaginable.

“Heaven, it’s quite a climb…” reads the epigraph to the bio section on the band’s website, a line lifted from the “Saturnalia” track “Seven Stories Underground.” Here’s to hoping the duo’s ascent continues on for a few more rungs, and that they keep dragging us up along with them.

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