The Twilight Singers SHE LOVES YOU (One Little Indian)

As the louche, pompadoured frontman of that great Cincinnati alt-rock band with soul, the Afghan Whigs, Greg Dulli managed to make almost every song sound like a dispatch from the same black hole of curdled sexual energy. So it’s no surprise that on this album of covers by his post-Whigs pseudo-solo project the Twilight Singers, he makes other people’s songs sound just like his own. The Whigs made covers a central part of their live shows; they even recorded a 1992 EP called Uptown Avondale that purported to explicate their connection to old Supremes and Al Green tunes.

Dulli’s choices here are more eclectic — Björk’s "Hyperballad," Billie Holiday’s "Strange Fruit," John Coltrane’s "A Love Supreme," George Gershwin’s "Summertime," and Mary J. Blige’s "Real Love," among others — but he finds in them the same alpha-male melancholy he’s always buttered his bread with. "Hyperballad," its trebly electronics replaced by a bass-heavy rock groove, becomes a demonstration of devotional bravado. "Real Love" is sung as an intentionally unconvincing renunciation of promiscuity. And the swaggering braggadocio in Skip James’s "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" takes the subject matter of gangster rap back to its beginnings in African-American R&B. Crooning exaggeratedly over smeared electric guitars and beer-buzzed percussion, Dulli barges into these songs like an uninvited guest and quickly makes himself the compelling center of attention.

(The Twilight Singers perform this Friday, October 15, downstairs at the Middle East, 480 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square; call 617-864-EAST.)