CULT RECORD:AFGHAN WHIGS:"GENTLEMEN"(1993)

One of the best albums of 1993, Gentlemen relentlessly documents the emotional and physical cruelties of a tormented relationship that will never end--because the man and womam inside it are getting just what they want.The mood is Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, only after the rise and fall of the sexual revolution. And the song titles singer/writer/sex god Greg Dulli selected are pure Endgame: "If I Were Going" to "I Keep Coming Back." Explication won't alter a thing, so Dulli's character reveals the magician's tricks that have left him and his mate both sawed in half: "You think I'm scared of girls, well maybe but I'm not afraid of you.You want to scare me then you'll cling to me no matter what I do. "For one song, "My Curse," Marcy Mays of Scrawl steps in to sing for the woman, who views herself as just as much in control.)In a year that also witnessed the release of the film Naked, Gentlemen offered the other great portrait of what critic Amy Taubin called "the hate phucker."

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