War on Drugs

listening to under the pressure really does have a lot of that pagan place big music vibe

I don't know what to tell you Alfred this is good music. it's not as good as Ava Inferi but most people don't really give a shit about Ava Inferi, what can you do

Don't worry Steven, Alfred has been pretty intent on being a total drag in this thread from the get go

Am I wrong to wish they'd drop the synths and go full roots rock? Don't answer that, I know what you will all say. But I want more Taking The Farm and Arms Like Boulders, and less emoting over soundscapes for 10 minutes at a time.

Am I wrong to wish they'd drop the synths and go full roots rock?

No, you're right. I want them to go full Dire Straits.

Have you seen them live? I have not, but I wonder if they get closer to rock on stage.

Going straight roots rock would rob them of the thing that makes them interesting and unique, it's all about the combination of earthiness and floatiness.

otm

Don't feel like they're that good at either of them but only get by on being sorta interesting

synth vs. no synth is a red herring, i think some of you want them to write tighter songs which three albums in they're pretty clearly not going to do

more like war on interesting music

Listened to this based on seeing it in SNA constantly and it is not bad but it really lacks any tunes or hooks, just feels like lots of atmospherics and mood without any great dynamics. I really like the textures and I think that trying to hang them on "big songs" would be missing the point but as it sounds just now it feels a bit anaemic. But it is the kind of album that's interesting enough to make me want to persevere and listen a few times again to see if it opens up, and I think it's going to sound better in the summer for some reason.

Can't imagine listening to this band anywhere else than in a car on a highway

i just sit in my chair but i do pretend i'm in a car

i roll the windows down too

No, you're right. I want them to go full Dire Straits.

This record sounds more like Calling Elvis than Tunnel Of Love.

Fun thread to read. upper mississippi sh@kedown otm throughout. I kind of feel like it diminishes this band's music to only listen for the influences. I get why people do it, though, because we haven't really heard this particular mixture of influences before, so it's interesting to try to pinpoint exactly what they are channeling. For me their music appeals more as part of a long continuum of trance-inducing repetitive music (along the lines of Cave, Loop, Wooden Shjips, Spacemen 3, etc.) just one that happens to occasionally evoke a certain strain of east coast bar rock of the 80s. I really like this album, I think it's more consistent than earlier stuff, and the hooks are stronger, but so far nothing on it tops my favorite songs on Slave Ambient ("It's Your Destiny", "Original Slave", "Come to the City").

my album mix this morning transitioned from tony williams on miles' 'miles smiles' to the cymbals opening 'lost in the dream', didn't miss a beat

After several weeks of going crazy trying to figure out which song the melody & progression of "Eyes to the Wind" remind me of, I finally realized it's Belle & Sebastian, "My Wandering Days Are Over" (for some reason I had been thinking Pavement, I think because the production reminded me a little of CR,CR)

I read the recent interview w him about mental health issues he was dealing w before during and after making the record and it prompted me to listen to it again. Y'know how you go through these phases where maybe you listen to something fairly obsessively and then have to take a break from it b/c for whatever reasons even thinking about it makes you sick.

Anyway, I feel like he really did contact the Advocate that is present and available to all of our psyches -- the aspect of ourselves that argues for a more realistic and vaster picture of who we actually are. In our culture we don't have a vocabulary for, or instilled readymade spots for shamanic leanings to occupy -- we don't have a healing vocabulary. We do best at being cynical and inventing increasingly withering putdowns to express the disgust and unease that we feel at being incarnated in these forms. Anyway, maybe this is all insane projection on my part, but I think that the WoD guy contacted some of that vibe and managed to put it on his record. I don't grasp that feeling from many other records. The sense of wrestling w one's demons and catching them in that moment when you are looking into their eyes and seeing them as the helping spirits that they are. The actual grit in the oyster and all that junk. It's an ecology; we need poison as much as we need medicine.

i think that's a very interesting juxtaposition, del, between 'more realistic' and 'vaster'

i would normally be inclined to hear the blissed-out sound, and the motorik version of american road music, with less realism, somehow - because of associations with escapism, flight, abandonment

but there does seem to be something realistic about the sound (not just the lyrics), something about life/the world that's being intended by it

"blissed-out sound, and the motorik version of american road music" - thanks for nailing their sound so succinctly. i'd been struggling to describe them to people so far

oh i stole it from a review, no doubt, they all say that

the motorik version of american road music

I get what this means, but still, that is literally this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/A74-D-front-250.jpg

lol i don't hear ANY tom petty in THAT

i saw them last night in the huxley's in berlin. in the beginning i stood in the middle of the hall and it was so loud that i couldn't hear the music. then i went back to the end of the place and it was better. but their main problem to me seems that they only have two or three good songs. all the slow ballad stuff is rubbish and even most of the more uptempo songs seem soulless and tuneless. the live version of "under the pressure" was awesome though. slowly buildig up from the mist of guitar feedback, the kicking in and peaking when the saxophone joins in, then an improvisational burst out of free-jazzy cacophony and then back to the forward moving theme and finally a slow fade-out of vague guitar noises again. what really turned me off later on though was the drumming. the lead singer/guitarist started the drum machine with his foot and then the drummer just did playback. the drummer as actor, how crap has contemporary rock music become? in the end i left during the encore of a ballad. i don't remember the last time i left a concert before the end. the other decent song they played was of course "baby missiles".

If you think they have 3 good songs why did you go to the show?

I saw them at Austin Psych Fest this year and to me they seemed like a COINTELPRO sham band the Feds would use for infiltrating a scene with unintentional hilarious results.

Not buying whatever bill of goods they're selling.

If you think they have 3 good songs why did you go to the show?
that was a revelation that came over me after the concert...

Love these guys - but i'm not sure I would like to see them live. Seems to me their songs are there to get you lost in something (the road, the landscape, etc), but maybe wouldnt work as well if focused on intently and exclusively

They are fantastic live, you should go and see them if you get the chance, they start with the big rock songs and get gradually dronier as things progress.

i've come to terms with the fact this band is fundamentally crappy in some way but they hit some weird childhood ideal of FM 80s classic rock i can't help but be drawn to.

if you can't figure out what makes them fundamentally crappy then maybe they're not

i guess crappy's the wrong word....vacant? empty?
put it this way, i don't ever want to see them live because i feel like it would ruin something about them for be, expose them for what they are. but the records create some illusion of a remembered sound, sort of acidhead bruce hornsby does crazy horse type vibe

but like i said i do find myself listening to them

these guys are like balearic petty, i like em

needs a sequencer

yeah agree i think moving even farther towards boys of summer/arc of a dancer type vibes wouldn't be a bad idea

Arc of a diver you mean right?

effortlessly

Yep diver the winwood album

just got Lost in a Dream - baffled by all the Spacemen 3 refs in the wiki entry, I detect no discernible influence. If anything this sounds like Don Henley's 80s solo work, comment about 80s FM rock upthread very otm

i hear 80s dylan and mark knopfler

i know they aren't the most beloved band around here (or maybe the hater are just more vocals) but gosh, Lost in the Dream is such a fun summer record.

Still love "Taking the Farm"

this new one seems kind of...cheesy? "there's a darkness over there, but we ain't going"

I like it. It's not a great departure from the sound of LITD, which is fine by me. I still wish the drummer would learn to play fills. I mean, just give me one, dude.

Assuming the song will be on the album in addition to being released for RSD?

sounds great to me

saw them live a year ago and (perhaps I've mentioned this upthread) to my stoned surprise it totally rocked, channelling Bruce Springsteen a lot

I haven't listened to this one yet, but I saw that it's 11 minutes long. How much of that is outro? 7-8 minutes? This fuckin' guy and his outros.

new song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBWiMAu3uII

so i was listening to Lost in the Dream again today and it struck me how much it sounded of a piece with Ryan Adams' 1979. more dylan/petty phrasing obv but still.

definitely some sonic similarities (also I believe Ryan was born in 1989...)