Random Desire

Dulli's band the Afghan Whigs had reformed in 2012 for a reunion tour,[1] and released two albums, Do to the Beast (2014) and In Spades (2017).[2][3] In the past, Dulli had released solo material away from the Afghan Whigs and his other musical acts, the Twilight Singers and the Gutter Twins. In 2005, Dulli released Amber Headlights, an album compiling solo sessions written in 2001,[4] and a live album released in 2008 featuring content he had recorded at The Triple Door in Seattle for the A Drink for the Kids fundraising effort by The Vera Project.[5] Since 2009, Dulli had released solo cover tracks, such as covers of the Eddie Hinton tracks "Hard Luck Guy" and "Cover Me" in 2009,[6] and covers of Leonard Cohen, Sharon Van Etten and David Bowie.[7][8][9]

After the release of the Afghan Whigs' eighth studio album In Spades and the death of Afghan Whigs' guitarist Dave Rosser in 2017, Dulli began to work on Random Desire.[10] The album became a solo project when Dulli realized that many of his Afghan Whigs bandmates would be unavailable in the upcoming months: drummer Patrick Keeler would be on tour with his band The Raconteurs, and bassist John Curley had decided to go back to college.[11][12] After a burst of inspiration in February 2019, the album was primarily written and recorded between then and July 2019, at sessions in Joshua Tree National Park, Dulli's home in Los Angeles and New Orleans.[11]

The album, took influence from Prince and Todd Rundgren's methods of writing and performing almost every instrument on their records.[3] Dulli wrote and arranged the album entirely by himself along with playing the bulk of the instruments, but brought in supporting musicians to add accents to the songs.[3] These musicians included Queens of the Stone Age drummer Jon Theodore, singer Camille, and Afghan Whigs/Twilight Singers band members Rick Nelson, Jon Skibic, Mark McGuire and Mathias Schneeberger.[13]

The album was announced on December 4, 2019, the same day that the leading single "Pantomima" was released to streaming services.[10] The songs "It Falls Apart" and "A Ghost" were released in the month leading up to the album's release.[14][11] The final promotional single for the album was "Lockless" which was released on December 1, 2020. It was accompanied by a video directed by Bailey Smith featuring footage of New Orleans during the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020. Dulli stated that "the song itself suggests a loneliness and I felt the marriage between the song and these images [of a deserted New Orleans] was too perfect not to explore".[15]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.1/10[17]
Metacritic	76/100[18]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[19]
American Songwriter	[20]
Classic Rock	[21]
Kerrang!	[22]
Pitchfork	[23]
PopMatters	[24]
Rolling Stone	[25]

At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Random Desire has an average score of 76 based on 11 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[18] Album of the Year collected 13 reviews and calculated an average of 75 out of 100.[26] Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave the album 7.1 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.[17]

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Random Desire.[13]