“Lost in the Supermarket” – The Afghan Whigs
(Words/music: Mick Jones and Joe Strummer, available on Burning London: The Clash Tribute, Epic 1999)

Greg Dulli loves cover songs, and few others can reinterpret all different types of songs as successfully as he can.  With all of his musical ventures, including the Twilight Singers and the Gutter Twins, Dulli takes classic songs and reinvents them into new works.  This isn’t a new concept – jazz musicians have long taken famous tunes and spun them into something entirely different (John Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music is an excellent example).  Dulli’s skill for taking a part of a song and building it into something entirely different (for example, using “Superstition” as a segue into the Afghan Whigs’ “Going to Town,” turning Bjork’s lush “Hyperballad” into the Twilight Singers’ fuzzed out love song, or morphing Jose Gonzalez’ fragile “Down the Line” into The Gutter Twins’ piano-fueled romp) reminds me of a mechanic restoring a car.  Like the mechanic, Dulli takes the parts that he’s interested in and builds the rest of the song around this one part, still using the song as an opportunity to craft unique arrangement rather than trying to recreate the original in totality.

On “Lost in the Supermarket,” Dulli starts with the original’s lyrics and melody and replaces much of the rest of the song.  He trades in the original’s nervous bounce for a slower wash of guitars and coo-ing background vocals.  The distinctive guitar riff is gone as well, replaced by the more iconic drum beat from “Train in Vain (Stand By Me).”  This sort of musical quilting sounds like a wreck on paper, but it plays like a true tribute to both songs (interestingly, both are Mick Jones songs).  At the slower and heavier pace, “Lost in the Supermarket” becomes a song about isolation rather than suburban boredom.  While the protagonist in the original throws out the “nobody seemed to notice me” line as a chip on his shoulder, Dulli sings it like a jilted lover – the kind of person whose heart breaks with little fanfare.  It still reads as a treatise on suburban life, as Dulli’s protagonist sounds out of touch with the supermarket culture around him, only this time it sounds less like a generation gap and more as a disconnect with the culture at large. 

The best bit comes in the outro when Dulli sings part of the first verse of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” followed by the chorus from “Train in Vain.”  It’s more substantial than just “tagging” the songs at the end, as the refrain from “Lost in the Supermarket” intersects these other songs.  It makes the idea of being “lost” sound like abandonment rather than betrayal, as Dulli’s protagonist responds with resolution to be brave (“no I won’t / be afraid”) despite being lost and alone.  Even with all of these disparate pieces in one song, the Afghan Whigs makes it all work together, as Dulli’s lifting voice pulls the arrangement to the next level as it plays out.  It’s an arrangement that simultaneously reinvents the song while still paying tribute to the original.

More on The Afghan Whigs: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm