by William Ruhlmann & Marisa BrownThe Twilight Singers are a side project for Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli. Dulli conceived the group as a unit to make a concept album, Twilight as Played by the Twilight Singers, and enlisted fellow vocalists Harold Chichester of Howlin' Maggie and Shawn Smith of Brad and other bands, along with the Screaming Trees' Barrett Martin and a group of New Orleans session musicians, in 1997, at a time when the Afghan Whigs were between record contracts. Dulli finished off a version of the album, but then the Whigs signed to Columbia Records, it was thought best to issue a new Whigs album before any solo effort. After 1998's 1965, therefore, Dulli returned to his Twilight Singers recordings, reconceiving the project with British remix team Fila Brazillia (Steve Cobby and Dave McSherry). Columbia released the resulting album in September 2000. In 2003, Dulli and the band issued the critically acclaimed Blackberry Belle, which was followed the next year by She Loves You, a collection of covers. Dulli, who'd always had a fairly heavy drug habit, began to clean up his act and write songs for the Twilight Singers' fourth album, 2006's Powder Burns, which included appearances from ex-Afghan Whig John Curley, Queens of the Stone Age's Dave Catching, Joseph Arthur, and Ani DiFranco. A majority of the album was recorded in producer Mike Napolitano's studio in New Orleans, which had survived Hurricane Katrina but required generators to run it. Later that year, the five-song EP A Stitch in Time, which included covers of Massive Attack's "Live with Me" and Fat Freddy's Drop's "Flashback (both featuring Dulli's Gutter Twin Mark Lanegan), as well as original tracks, came out as an iTunes release only, but was later issued on CD in early 2007.