Greg Dulli looks like he’s getting ready to kick someone’s ass – maybe yours, if you’re dumb enough to have just attempted to take his picture. “Enough with the photographs,” growls the former Afghan Whigs front-man, in response to a camera flash from the back row. “We put posters up – we warned you guys about this, okay?’’
Dulli and former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan are playing an acoustic-only set and it’s a satisfying contrast to their underwhelming live show at Dublin’s Ambassador last year when songs from their Gutter Twins debut, Saturnalia, got lost in a stodge-rock haze. Sitting side by side tonight, accompanied by a lone guitarist, they strip away the embellishments from their brooding folk, revealing glimpses of nuance and vulnerability beneath the barndance-for-the apocalypse gloom.
Aside from giving the impression they would wade in at a moment’s notice to wrestle away an audience member’s camera phone, the pair are in unexpectedly playful mood – especially Lanegan, who actually drops a wisecrack at one point, telling Dulli, after a mid-set confab, that it looks like they’ve just kissed.
Over by 10pm, the performance feels a tad too short, though it’s hard to bemoan a concert that closes with a gorgeously vulnerable reading of The Everly Brothers’ ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’.