Soft Control

The Afghan Whigs — 2026

“Soft Control turns soul, menace, and reflection into one of the strongest late career records The Afghan Whigs have made.”

Forty years in, The Afghan Whigs still sound dangerous. Soft Control is their tenth album, carrying the same smoldering snarl Greg Dulli has always traded in, only now aimed with the calm of a man who has stopped fighting himself. “Jungle Roux” opens the album on a hot groove, all handclaps and easy swagger, and never once feels like a band past its prime or simply calling it in. There is real soul running through these songs, the kind that slips between the guitars and you immediately know this is a Whigs record. You can hear it in the well placed synths too, and in the way a horn or stray piano line drifts in to change a song’s temperature. Dulli keeps circling the spots where sex, power, and faith get tangled together, and what gets me most is his voice: somehow the strongest and the most delicate it has ever been, snapping into a growl one second and pulling back to almost nothing the next.

Dulli has talked about aging the way David Bowie did, as becoming the person you were always meant to be, and you can hear that clarity settle across the record. All of the fire that filled 1993’s Gentlemen or “Going To Town” from Black Love (1996) is still lit, but it is completely under the band’s control. You hear it most on “Duvateen,” where Dulli looks mortality dead in the eye. The sequencing is smart: side A stacks the punchy, immediate songs up front while side B drifts into more headphone territory, before the six and a half minute closer “A Simulation” rises on a swell of piano, Mellotron, and strings. Guests like Petra Haden and Bo Koster of My Morning Jacket add depth, while Patrick Keeler’s drumming once again shines throughout the album. Best of all, it is lean. At thirty seven minutes there is no filler and if you have been a longtime fan it is exactly the album you will want to hear. I have liked every recent Whigs album, but this one for sure sticks better. Soft Control is the best record they have made in twenty eight years, and it truly connects to their history without living in it.