Congregation

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Congregation album cover
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Total Tracks: 12   Total Length: 45:04

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Douglas Wolk

eMusic Contributor

Douglas Wolk writes about pop music and comic books for Time, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wired and elsewhere. He's the author of Reading Comics: How Gra...more »

03.15.10
One long, cruel seduction
Label: Sub Pop Records

Afghan Whigs were an anomaly among the early Sub Pop bands. They were from unfashionable Cincinnati rather than the Pacific Northwest; smoldering singer-guitarist Greg Dulli wrote lyrics that treated sex as a devastating obsession rather than making easy jokes out of it or ignoring it altogether. And, unlike almost every other underground rock band of the time, they were obsessed with the erotic buzz of classic soul music. (You'd never mistake their grimy, headlong rock for Stax, but the wah-wah guitar on "Turn On the Water" is descended from Isaac Hayes much more than from Cream, for instance.) The one cover here is, of all things, "The Temple" from Jesus Christ Superstar, but the Whigs' original songs are one long, cruel seduction — the confession in "This Is My Confession" is "you were only meat to me," and that's not even as dark as Dulli gets. Don't miss the bonus track here, the boozy come-hither "Miles Iz Ded," which became a Whigs live standard.

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bronto84

bronto84

sori guys...your music/band sux including this one. plus the singer is just terrible,terrible,terrible. no one cares about mick jaggers daughter.

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anthemic (if that's a word...)

toxicyaker70

I'd say this is their best, but "Gentlemen" may just be a bit more powerful and cohesive. No comparison to Nirvana, this band had bigger balls than anyone of the time period.

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Only Afghan Whigs I've Heard

Bubby

It's probably been 15 years since I've listened to this and I forgot how much I liked it. The bonus track was always my favorite. Congregation and Turn on the Water are good too. I'll have to check out some of their other stuff.

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Forget Nirvana...

quiteQuacky

This (along with the Afghan Whigs' major-label followup "Gentlemen") is one of the greatest albums of the era. Not to mention the best album cover featuring a baby ;-)

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The grunge era’s most overlooked masterpiece, Congregation was the Afghan Whigs’ breakthrough album, an incendiary and insidious set which bridges the gap between the noisy aggression of the band’s early releases and the soulful swagger of their later work. Slipping with ominous ease into the sinister, self-obsessed Lothario guise which would serve him so well from here on out, Greg Dulli announces his arrival as a truly magnetic presence — by turns predator (“Tonight”) and prey (“I’m Her Slave”), he’s the guy your parents always warned you about, delivering each syllable of his remarkable lyrics with equal measures of innuendo and venom. Equally startling is the Whigs’ musical growth — while still unmistakably a member of the Sub Pop stable, there’s a greater maturity and depth to their sinewy sound, with a newfound grasp of mood and nuance on tracks like the opening “Her Against Me” and “Let Me Lie to You” — the wah-wah guitar which dominates “Turn On the Water,” meanwhile, offers the first taste of the funk ambitions to follow. It was hardly a surprise when the Whigs jumped to Elektra soon after — Congregation was clearly their ticket to the big leagues. – Jason Ankeny

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