The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding

vocally, granduciel has always reminded me of Petty's vocal on The Waiting if he sang exactly like that on every song

I was impressed by the NPR interview this morning, not the gist of it, per se, but WoD guy himself. I was expecting some mumbly indie dude but he seemed really upbeat and relaxed and happy to be there. Good for him, I say.

don't quite understand the guy getting defined as some sort of perfectionist

fwiw, acquaintance of mine who played on this album says Adam "slaved & bled over this album"

i mean that's the sort of thing you might hear about any album, but i believe him

around the time they released 'lost in the dream', granduciel said he wasn't even sure he had another album in him. so for an album that may not have even happened, this is really something else. the album is balanced much better LITD, whose back half i always found boring, despite liking all of the songs. i don't think it has a song as good as 'red eyes' but there are for sure a number of POX GOAT jams on it. 'nothing to find' might be the most war on drugs song ever, they even quote a guitar riff from the last album on it.

LITD took a few years to sink in for me but this one has me right out of the gate

also refreshing to have a critically acclaimed rock band in 2017 who appreciates the emotional power of a guitar solo

It's all very Musician-magazine-tries-to-grapple-with-the-end-of-the-eighties-core. And some may like that.

It took an Argentine restaurant for me to accept Lost in a Dream.

i'm just glad someone who's meandered all the way into the androgyne world of indie has come out the other side with an (i think) more examined reflection on masculinity in 2017

i don't know if/don't think that adam granduciel is queer, but at the risk of overlaying identity signification this feels just queered enough to poke at what masculinity means without being overtly femme, which i kind of really appreciate

this album is so lush, I think it could probably make trees grow faster and flowers bloom.

Dire straits was one of the biggest acts on Earth in 1985-1986, maybe the biggest —like huge in continental and Eastern Europe. Yet I do not know of one single noteworthy act that wanted to sound anything like 'em in three decades…until the WoD . It's like no one, not even any alt-country acts, wanted to sound like DS for so long that the one that finally did then became big. I know a lotta old guys (the Musician mag cohort indeed) and guys around my age who like respectable 80s AOR who do backflips for this band.

otm

In Chains is so great!

Isn't the most obvious reference Springsteen? Everytime I hear one of his songs I start thinking I'd rather listen to Springsteen instead.

the album is great but he could edit half of the songs, most of the time they just go by without groove or doing anything interesting.

saw them live where they channelled Bruce much more than on record

the album is great but he could edit half of the songs, most of the time they just go by without groove or doing anything interesting.

So how can it be great?

Ok maybe great is too strong a word heh... I mean it's produced in a way that everything sounds "lush" and wjen the songd finally settle they are good but then they start meandering... I don't think he does anything special with his arrangements in the non-vocals bits and he doesn't seem how to end a song, he just starts piling up sounds until the song exhausts itself. The shortest song in here is 4mins long but most of them are well over the 6min mark and it becomes a bit of a chore. Take Dan Bejar/Destroyer as a counter-argument on how to do 6min+ songs right.

When it's good it's good and when it's bad it isn't offensively bad it's just a bit boring but it's produced in a way that's easy to leave in the background without being annoying.

the album is great but he could edit half of the songs, most of the time they just go by without groove or doing anything interesting.

this is how i felt about the back half of LITD and i think this impulse is reigned in and streamlined on the new one

So how can it be great?

because they're a jammy rock band where being concise is beside the point?

strawberry or guava?

I was talking to Moka, by the way, who listed several flaws that would detract from an album's greatness. If he thinks it's merely "good," that's fine.

i know, i was giving a possible explanation on how it could still be considered great given his critiques

alfred there are lots of unhappy campers in the comment section below your review :(

Well, again, it's not a bad album by design, imho. The good outweighs the bad, and the bad is not terrible...also it doesn't feel like the songs are needlessly long because the artist is presenting them as self-important ambitious epics (eg: Oasis), I imagine it's more like he just doesn't know when to stop... maybe a byproduct of his live performances?

The potential is there though, if he ever learns to trim down the fat or do something more iwith those instrumental passages.

I cant tell by your review if you hated the album or not Alfred haha... it seems like we're on the same page.

Three super solid and super hooky tracks (2-4) and the rest is pretty good if not a bit samey (as people have mentioned). It reminds a bit of 'Bloom' by Beach House where the group's current sound has been realized to its maximum potential but another one like it would start to wear on me.

I don't mind the long bits as it's usually hauling off on a section I really enjoy.

i like it so far

the guitar tone at the end of "Pain", that's what i'm here for

i think i liked the idea of this band and some individual songs more than any particular album, but i'm pretty in love with this one

I love the backgroundness of this band in general, it's like ambient rock. And then the guitar solos pop up and pull you back in (sometimes).

this album is good to listen to whilst smoking w33d

The vocals are too loud for me to tune out while drinking, etc.

Like I wrote, this isn't terrible but the mythmaking already going on with this band/Granduciel is absurd and incommensurate with the modest achievements of this album and the last. I know rock is in dire shape on the charts, but The War on Drugs isn't the well in the desert.

I love the backgroundness of this band in general, it's like ambient rock. And then the guitar solos pop up and pull you back in (sometimes).

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, August 27, 2017 7:24 PM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same

feel like this one is just more... misty and enveloping than the last one. i didn't really pay "thinking of a place" much mind as a single but the way the little like sighing harmonica bits are as magnetic as any of the guitar solos is one of my fav things about the record. "nothing to find" is my shit right now, it's funny that he plays a lick from "ocean in between the waves"

Dire straits was one of the biggest acts on Earth in 1985-1986, maybe the biggest —like huge in continental and Eastern Europe. Yet I do not know of one single noteworthy act that wanted to sound anything like 'em in three decades…until the WoD . It's like no one, not even any alt-country acts, wanted to sound like DS for so long that the one that finally did then became big.

this is very interesting and i've been thinking about it for a bit. this might be the reason that we can't stop talking about who they sound like: because it's a "sound" from the 80s that hasn't been recycled a million times already. the closest similarity i can think of is destroyer's kaputt (and it's probably no coincidence that WoD were the opening act on that tour)

"in chains" is an amazing dylan-bruce hybrid

Dire Straits, and especially Mark Knopfler's guitar playing, might not have influenced much American or European music, but it was strangely influential to the music of West Africa, especially the Tuareg culture that birthed Tinariwen and Bombino

(this prob belongs in another thread, but too interesting not to share: http://africasacountry.com/2015/03/the-unexpected-popularity-of-dire-straits-in-north-african-tuareg-communities/ )

that's fascinating!

yeah, v interesting read!

I always got more Don Henley or Steve Winwood in the 80s from War on Drugs than Dire Straits. Musically, not vocally. Also Dire Straits lyrics are way more narrative than WoD.

Don Henley's late '80s material was often of punishing length too.

You're looking at it all wrong: maybe War on Drugs has been mostly influenced by North African nomadic Tuareg rock all along!

his buddy kurt vile (former drug on warrior) for sure was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_oUt5Pi9jo

(^ that show slayed)

good grief…this song "disappearing" is way way way WAY all up in Knopfler's steez…

Had this on repeat the last few days while decorating; I still much prefer Lost In The Dream, but it's slowly growing on me.

Does somewhat feel like if the vocal tracks of several of these songs were swapped over, I would struggle to notice the difference ...

the music this draws from hits me in a deeply nostalgic place, really the sounds themselves and i enjoy this band as a child in many ways and therefore understand their ultimate dullness but like them in a way that i'm not inclined to interrogate.

^^this, basically.

I've listened to it three times and I can't remember a single song. It doesn't sound bad tho... I guess it qualifies as ambient rock?

^^ perfectly put (xxpost)

the 4 part podcast about 2020 + the live album (4 x 25 minutes, approx) is pretty interesting & enjoyable: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-super-high-quality-podcast/id1538505374

a longer podcast episode on the making of Lost In The Dream https://www.buzzsprout.com/1346161/14687088-lost-in-the-dream-10th-anniversary