Feel it now and don’t resistThis time the anger’s better than the kissI must admit when so inclinedI tend to lose it than confront my mind
Some songs that become so closely associated with their original performers that covering them feels a little like borrowing somebody else’s leather jacket. You might fit into it, you might even look terrific, but everybody remembers who wore it first. The Afghan Whigs’ Debonair is one of those numbers, loaded with Greg Dulli’s particular combination of seduction, self-disgust, and barely concealed bad intentions. Seattle’s Ghosts in the Graveyard approach it with enough confidence to make the jacket theirs.
There is also something pleasantly strange about hearing an Afghan Whigs song pulled toward deathrock. The original already had danger baked into its bones, so the transformation feels less like genre tourism than discovering that two people from different neighborhoods have been drinking at the same questionable bar for years.
The band gives Debonair a harder goth-rock frame, pushing the guitars forward while electronic accents gather around the edges. Byron C. Miller sings with the dramatic authority the material requires, leaning into the song’s appetite for trouble without treating Dulli’s original performance as sacred text. Paul Morgan’s guitar work supplies much of the momentum, moving between muscular chords and sharper details while the arrangement maintains the nightclub immediacy that has become central to Ghosts in the Graveyard.
That relationship becomes clearer in the accompanying video, directed and edited by Miller and shot by cinematographer Ryan Purcell. The band performs inside a small club surrounded by an enthusiastic audience, with the camera catching bodies pressed toward the stage and musicians feeding off the room. Rather than turning the performance into an elaborate visual concept, the clip concentrates on physical proximity and the chemistry between band and crowd. It gives Debonair the slightly dangerous communal charge that rock music tends to acquire when there are fewer than six feet between the singer and somebody holding a beer.
Watch the video for Debonair below:
The cover will close Ghosts in the Graveyard’s forthcoming Monsters for the Masses: Resurrected, due this October through Re:Mission Entertainment. The record revisits the band’s 2016 album for its tenth anniversary, rebuilding the material from the ground up following the expanded reach of 2025’s Absolute Death. With Miller joined by Morgan, keyboardist Kaylie Cortez, and vocalist Shelly Smith, the current lineup has developed into a formidable live unit, something the Debonair video makes immediately apparent.
Choosing this song as the album’s final word makes sense. Debonair has always sounded like somebody smiling while making several decisions they will regret tomorrow morning. Ghosts in the Graveyard preserve the song’s wicked little grin, then surround it with bigger guitars, gothic drama, and the welcome possibility that someone in the front row may lose a shoe.
Listen to Debonair below and order the single here.
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