Powder Burns

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.