The War On Drugs – I Don’t Live Here Anymore – Album Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

The War On Drugs – A Deeper Understanding – Album Review

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2017/08/30/the-war-on-drugs-a-deeper-understanding-album-review/

The War on Drugs - Future Weather

This EP was the second release from The War on Drugs, and came out in 2010.  The whole EP is a kind of wash of sound, introduced by opening intro Come to the City #14.  The second track, Baby Missiles is kind of polarising, some will find this anthemic but too often it comes off sounding like the cheesier moments of Bruce Springsteen.  Comin' Through is more relaxed, and far more enjoyable, a medium paced strumalong track with guitars you could melt into, and this one could go on forever such is the lazy, amiable groove created.  Later, Brothers emulates this kind of feeling, you can almost hear Adam Granduciel and co drawing up their template for later work.  The band sound so... optimistic and wide-eyed on tracks like this, like the sondtrack to endless possibilities.

A change of tack arrives with the folky, Dylanesque A Pile of Tires, but mostly here it's gorgeous, echoey stuff like Comin' Around, Missiles Reprise and the glacial final track The History of Plastic.  Definitely one worth picking up if you like the band, for everyone else proceed directly to 2014's Lost In The Dream.

The War On Drugs - Lost In The Dream

The War On Drugs' third album, released in 2014, is an extraordinary beast.  On first listen it seems to drift by, each track running into each other with little variation.  Similarly on subsequent listens.  However after some time it burrows its way into your brain BECAUSE each track runs into each other with little variation.  Ok, enough of the smart-assery.  The album opens with the tone setting Under The Pressure, all ringing, liquid guitars and a positively euphoric sounding Adam Granduciel on vocals.  A huge anthemic sound.  Even more anthemic is the following track Red Eyes, with soaring keyboards washing across the track.

Suffering is slower, sparser, like a slowed down spaced out version of the first two tracks, with the palette of sound very much drawn from Under The Pressure, featuring some gorgeous shimmering keyboards.  By the net track An Ocean In Between the pace has picked up to sort of mid-eighties Don Henley standard (think: Boys of Summer).  All of this is quite unremarkable except for the actual playing, the musicianship in this album is superb.  On the aforementioned track lies a guitar solo that really lifts it to the heights of the rest of the album.  Disappearing is the centrepiece.  It's nearly seven minutes of absolute lushness, a laid-back atmosphere, beautiful keyboards and gorgeously simple chord changes.  At seven minutes it's just not long enough.

Eyes To The Wind and the title track are more rootsy, Granduciel doing his best Bob Dylan impression but the sound is full and uplifting.  On the other hand The Haunting Idle is more mood setting atmospherics than any of the previous tracks  Burning is like U2's Bad on speed, crossed with some guitar out of The Cure's Disintegration, and the album finishes with the Tunnel of Love era Springsteen of In Reverse.

It's the stadium rock it's ok to like.  Built from some arguably pedestrian influences, they are blended to thrilling effect.