“Bonnie Brae”
from the album Powder Burns
2006
iTunes
Stream “Bonnie Brae” at the Twilight Singers’ MySpace page
You gotta love the Twilight Singers’ Greg Dulli. By any commercial measure, his career has been in a nosedive since his mid-’90s heyday of fronting the Afghan Whigs, but in what can only be described as a welcome delusion, Dulli still pretends he’s the rock star he never was. Instead of downscaling his albums, he’s made them bigger and grander. Powder Burns is his boldest yet: A swaggering swank-rock opera filled with gnashing guitars, theatrical string arrangements, angelic backup singers, and smoking grooves. Dulli himself continues dialing up the drama, refusing to go gently into that good night.
Dulli’s been singing this song for years: relatively subdued verse, stormy chorus, gradual build across the bridge to a big climax. There’s nothing on “Bonnie Brae” we haven’t heard before on songs like “John the Baptist” and “Teenage Wristband,” but I’m not sure I’ve heard Dulli do it so well and so effortlessly. A simple guitar line battens down the intro, seemingly unspectacular, but it repeats throughout the song until it has grown insistent and insinuating. That guitar adds a stoic air to Dulli’s conflicted lyrics and unreserved vocals, both of which are strong enough to make the word “indubitably” sound perfectly apt at the climax. Reportedly written in New Orleans immediately following Hurricane Katrina, and featuring backing vocals by Ani DiFranco, “Bonnie Brae” sounds like Dulli is weathering the storm and emerging stronger on the other side.