Chemical Burn Part 1

It don’t matter / when you turn / gonna survive / live and learn, rumbles Mark Lanegan against a steady electric scale. A fitting gateway into Greg Dulli’s post-grunge rock of the Twilight Singers, Lanegan (frequent collaborator of Queens of the Stone Age, former Screaming Trees vocalist) calmly sings with conviction, “I’ve been thinking ’bout you baby / come live with me.” This song – a stellar cover of Massive Attack’s “Live With Me” – bursts forth with mounting energy. An alarm-like noise reverberates just under the fray when things ease, while Dulli provides raspy backup vocals to the incendiary refrain “Nothing’s right / without you here / I’ll give all that I have / just to keep you near.” Delving away from the trip-hop leanings of the original, this brilliant rendition deserves the rare accolade of “As good, if not better than the original” a la Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower.” This is just one track of five on the Twilight Singers’ new EP A Stitch in Time.Lanegan (who is now listed as a band member on their myspace page) can also be heard on the bass-heavy spy-groove “Flashback.” He and former Afghan Whig Dulli trade off vocal lines displaying chemistry that could fool a layman into thinking the two had been singing side-by-side for years. Again, the song grows in power and weight without increasing tempo, merely through enticing melodic manipulations slowly evolved as the tune progresses. Singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur also contributes a lush falsetto to the sunny “Sublime.”

A Stitch in Time concludes with soulful folk ballad “The Lure Would Prove Too Much.” Acoustic strums set the tone as Dulli sways in peaceful croon to-and-fro. Once the structure is set, the song meanders off into a beautiful outro accompanied by charming answering machine messages. It’s an elastic tunefulness that serves The Twilight Singers well here, and in their live performances.