Blackberry Belle by The Twilight Singers

Blackberry Belle, the second full-length from the Twilight Singers, the band Greg Dulli started as a side project away from the Afghan Whigs, came out on October 14, 2003, and grief runs all the way through it. Dulli made it in memory of his close friend, the director Ted Demme, who died of a heart attack during a basketball game in January 2002. At the time Dulli was deep into a different set of recordings, Amber Headlights, and he abandoned them once Demme was gone; the sessions that followed, driven in part by that loss, became this record.

It's a smoky, after-hours affair, Dulli's bruised croon prowling through the dark, and the guest list gives it real depth: Mark Lanegan, Petra Haden, Kamasi Washington, Stanton Moore, Alvin Youngblood Hart and Mathias Schneeberger all turn up. The band played the whole album live just once, at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall in 2011, with Lanegan and Haden joining them on stage.

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