About this item

Philadelphia’s The War On Drugs are the vehicle of Adam Granduciel, frontman, rambler, shaman, pied piper guitarist and apparent arranger.

‘Slave Ambient’, their second album proper, is a brilliant 47-minute sprawl of rock ‘n’ roll, conceptualized with a sense of adventure and captured with seasons of bravado.

Recorded over the last four years, the album puts the weirdest influences in just the right places. Tom Petty and Spacemen 3, ‘Neu! '75’ and ‘Blood On The Tracks’, Flying Saucer Attack and Bruce Springsteen, New Order and No Wave, The Byrds, Bread and Burt Bacharach. How is a music fan supposed to reconcile all of this?

Synthesizers fall where you might expect electric guitars (and vice versa); country rock sidles up to the warped extravagance of '80s pop. Instant classic ‘Baby Missiles’ is part Springsteen fever dream, part motorik anthem. ‘Original Slave’ might sound like a hillbilly power drone, but ‘City Reprise #12’ suggests Phil Collins un-retiring in order to back Harmonia.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: This is a beautiful, hazy, rock'n'roll record, which, sure enough shimmers and thrums and is actually semi-ambient. Check all the tasty influences listed below, but if I told you that Kurt Vile is a sometime member of this band and that this was like a mysterious cousin to Vile's "Smoke Rings..", then you'd get the feel of this album right away. Cool.

TRACK LISTING

1. Best Night
2. Brothers
3. I Was There
4. Your Love Is Calling My Name
5. The Animator
6. Come To The City
7. Come For It
8. It's Your Destiny
9. City Reprise #12
10. Baby Missiles
11. Original Slave
12. Black Water Falls

‘Future Weather’ (Bonus Disc With Ltd CD Version Only)
Come To The City
Baby Missiles
Comin' Through
A Pile Of Tires
Comin' Around
Brothers
Missiles Reprise
The History Of Plastic