The War On Drugs first studio album in four years, ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’. Over the last 15 years, The War on Drugs have steadily emerged as one of this century’s great rock and roll synthesists, removing the gaps between the underground and the mainstream, between the obtuse and the anthemic, making records that wrestle a fractured past into a unified and engrossing present. The War On Drugs have never done that as well as they do with their fifth studio album, ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’, an uncommon rock album about one of our most common but daunting processes—resilience in the face of despair.

Just a month after The War On Drugs’ ‘A Deeper Understanding’ received the 2018 Grammy for Best Rock Album, the core of Granduciel, bassist Dave Hartley, and multi-instrumentalist Anthony LaMarca retreated to upstate New York to jam and cut new demos, working outside of the predetermined roles each member plays in the live setting. These sessions proved highly productive, turning out early versions of some of the most immediate songs on ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’. It was the start of a dozen-plus session odyssey that spanned three years and seven studios, including some of rock’s greatest sonic workshops like Electric Lady in New York and Los Angeles’ Sound City. Band leader Adam Granduciel and trusted co-producer/engineer Shawn Everett spent untold hours peeling back every piece of these songs and rebuilding them.

One of the most memorable sessions occurred in May 2019 at Electro-Vox, in which the band’s entire line-up — rounded out by keyboardist Robbie Bennett, drummer Charlie Hall, and saxophonist Jon Natchez — convened to record the affecting album opener “Living Proof.” Typically, Granduciel assembles The War On Drugs records from reams of overdubs, like a kind of rock ‘n’ roll jigsaw puzzle. But for “Living Proof,” the track came together in real time, as the musicians drew on their chemistry as a live unit to summon some extemporaneous magic. The immediacy of the performance was appropriate for one of the most personal songs Granduciel has ever written.

The War On Drugs’ particular combination of intricacy and imagination animates the 10 songs of ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’, buttressing the feelings of Granduciel’s personal odyssey. It’s an expression of rock ’n’ roll’s power to translate our own experience into songs we can share and words that direct our gaze toward the possibility of what is to come.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Already being hailed as their best record yet, main man Adam Granduciel freshens things up by welcoming more band collaboration than on previous records. Those trademark, lush, chunky drums are, of course, still present, but opening proceedings with a stark, naked ballad, indicates that change is afoot. A nice twist on a winning formula.

TRACK LISTING

Living Proof
Harmonia’s Dream
Change
I Don’t Wanna Wait
Victim
I Don’t Live Here Anymore
Old Skin
Wasted
Rings Around My Father’s Eyes
Occasional Rain

A Deeper Understanding is the band’s first album since 2014’s universally acclaimed Lost In The Dream, and their debut album with Atlantic. Following the Record Store Day release of the 11-minute “Thinking of a Place,” The War On Drugs present the album’s lead single, “Holding On.”

For much of the three and a half year period since the release of Lost In The Dream, The War On Drugs’ frontman, Adam Granduciel, led the charge for his Philadelphia-based sextet as he holed up in studios in New York and Los Angeles to write, record, edit, and tinker—but, above all, to busy himself in work. Teaming up with engineer Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Weezer), Granduciel challenged the notion of what it means to create a fully realized piece of music in today’s modern landscape. Calling on his bandmates – bassist Dave Hartley, keyboarding Robbie Bennett, drummer Charlie Hall and multi-instrumentalists Anthony LaMarca and Jon Natchez -- continuously throughout the process, the result is a “band record” in the noblest sense, featuring collaboration, coordination, and confidence at every turn. Through those years of relocation, the revisiting and re-examining of endless hours of recordings, unbridled exploration and exuberance, Granduciel’s gritty love of his craft succeeded in pushing the band to great heights. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Adam Granduciel and co. exploded into our hearts with the peerless ‘Lost In The Dream’, three years ago. Taking classic 70s rock (particularly of a Dylan vintage) and somehow making it modern, here was a band for right across the ages, a band to truly believe in. They returned, this year (on Record Store Day!) with their magnum opus, and it was immediately apparent that with "Thinking Of A Place", they had, incredibly upped the ante. Here was 11 massive minutes of bliss and wonder. High summer and the album dropped: ‘LITD’ part two, or squared, if you like. The songs were huge (in every way) but the production was out of this world. This was sun-roof down, beers in the back, cruise control, heart-rending, shimmering classic rock. But, crucially, with a drum machine! Everything we could have hoped for in a follow-up to a modern classic.

TRACK LISTING

1. Up All Night
2. Pain
3. Holding On
4. Strangest Thing
5. Knocked Down
6. Nothing To Find
7. Thinking Of A Place
8. In Chains
9. Clean Living
10. You Don’t Have To Go

Lost In The Dream is the third album by Philadelphia band The War On Drugs, but in many ways, it feels like the first. Around the release of the 2011 breakthrough Slave Ambient, Adam Granduciel spent the bulk of two years on the road, touring through progressively larger rock clubs, festival stages and late-night television slots. As these dozen songs shifted and grew beyond what they'd been in the studio, The War on Drugs became a bona fide rock 'n' roll band.

That essence drives Lost In The Dream, a 10-song set produced by Granduciel and longtime engineer Jeff Zeigler. In the past, Granduciel built the core of songs largely by himself. But these tunes were played and recorded by the group that had solidified so much on the road: Dave Hartley, (his favorite bassist in the world), who had played a bit on The War on Drugs' 2008 debut Wagonwheel Blues, and pianist Robbie Bennett, a multi-instrumentalist who contributed to Slave Ambient. This unit spent eight months bouncing between a half-dozen different studios that stretched from the mountains of North Carolina to the boroughs of New York City. Only then did Granduciel--the proudly self-professed gearhead, and unrepentant perfectionist--add and subtract, invite guests and retrofit pieces. He sculpted these songs into a musical rescue mission, through and then beyond personal despair and anxiety. Lost In The Dream represents the trials of the trip and the triumphs of its destination.

"I wanted there to be a singular voice, but I wanted it to be a project of great friends. Everyone in the band cares about it so much," he says. "That is the crux of it--growing up, dealing with life, having close friends, helping each other get by. That is what the record's all about."

As such, these tunes reveal a careful and thrilling reinvention of the sound that's become The War on Drugs' trademark. The signature meld of long tones and scattershot layers still stands, with phantom drum machines and organ lines dotting the musical middle distance all across Lost In The Dream. Note the way the keys whisper against the guitar's growl as the tempestuous "An Ocean in Between the Waves" approaches pentecostal heat. Hear how, when a sharp and hard riff cuts into the inescapable chorus of "Red Eyes," synthetic strings and baritone saxophone shape a soft, infinite bed beneath it.

But there's a newfound directness to these tunes, too. Granduciel's voice steps out from behind its typical web of effects--louder now, with more experiences to share and more steel from having survived them. He sounds less like a prismatic reflection of a rock bandleader, more like the emboldened actualization of that idea. With its crisp, unencumbered delivery, "Eyes to the Wind" becomes the album's centerpiece and the group's new anthem. This is Granduciel's to-date triumph and the exact moment where Lost In The Dream moves from a tale of confusion to one of resolve. Throughout most of the record, grips loosen and senses fail, memories are mourned and expectations are abandoned. But after the Rolling Thunder lift of "Eyes to the Wind," Granduciel finds new contentment and direction. Anguish sublimates into deliverance. Backed by his bros, Granduciel becomes a preacher in a new pulpit.

TRACK LISTING

1. Under The Pressure
2. Red Eyes
3. Suffering
4. An Ocean In Between The Waves
5. Disappearing
6. Eyes To The Wind
7. The Haunting Idle
8. Burning
9. Lost In The Dream
10. In Reverse

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

The War On Drugs push the boundaries of a quintessentially American music. Guitars soar and colorful clouds roll past whatever sun or moon you are cruising under, through whatever old bar you are reveling within. The War On Drugs point toward a tireless horizon in the distance that you will never reach but are compelled to chase. It's a tail you've chased your whole life and will continue chasing because your life is more poetic when you are moving toward it - your cinematography is more rich. Wagonwheel Blues is one of those albums that each of us holds onto tightly. They get moved from apartment to apartment through the years; they are songs on the radio that follow us from town to town. They evoke waves of nostalgia and grow more poignant with each new bump along the road.

In The War On Drugs we have a fresh face that already sounds like an old friend. Bringing a dose of the West Coast to the hard streets of Philadelphia, their songs recall the '80s guitar army of Sonic Youth with the captivating lyrics and vocal stylings of Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen. Songwriter Adam Granduciel (vocals/guitar) leads the attack with his lyrical paintings of his own American landscape. Walls of guitar - acoustic, electric, and twelve-string - douse each track of this debut album, threatening to cast the band into space rock territory, but the melodies and immediately identifiable lyrics soldier on to keep these songs from blasting into the esoteric beyond. With Wagonwheel Blues, Granduciel joins a distinct set of songwriters in a new golden era of polished-yet-subcultural underground music. The War On Drugs have that unmistakable singularity that comes along only so often, with the spirit of invention and playfulness lying earnestly at the forefront of their creative process.