The War on Drugs | ||
| Allmusic Biography : Mixing the grand-scale guitar attack of Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine with a melodic sense and lyrical perspective that recall Bob Dylan roaring down Highway 61, Philadelphias the War on Drugs are the creation of a pair of Dylan fans, Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile, who met at a party in 2003. After several drinks, Granduciel and Vile discovered their shared fascination with the Bard of Minnesota, and began working on songs together. By 2005, the pair had enough material to launch a proper band, and the War on Drugs were born. With Granduciel and Vile fronting the band, a variety of accompanists drifted in and out of the lineup before the War on Drugs settled on a stable lineup of Granduciel on vocals, guitar, and keyboards; Vile on guitar and vocals; Charlie Hall on organ and drums; Dave Hartley on bass, and Kyle Lloyd on drums and percussion. While the War on Drugs were hesitant to quit their jobs and begin touring extensively, the band became a frequent presence on the Philadelphia music scene and impressed out-of-towners during occasional gigs in New York City. In 2007, the band completed its debut EP, a five-song set called Barrel of Batteries, posted online as a free download. Positive press for both the EP and the groups powerful live shows caught the attention of the noted independent label Secretly Canadian, which signed the band, releasing its first full-length album, Wagonwheel Blues, in June 2008. However, by the end of that year, Vile, Hall, and Lloyd all departed the group, with Vile making a name for himself as a solo artist soon after. After the mass exodus, drummer Mike Zanghi joined Granduciel and Hartley, and that trio lineup made its recorded debut with 2010s mini-album Future Weather. That same year, Hartley released the first album from his solo project, Nightlands. Multi-instrumentalist Robbie Bennett then joined the War on Drugs for 2011s Slave Ambient, their second proper album, which gained the band significant critical acclaim. While touring Slave Ambient, Granduciel set about writing and recording their third LP. Taking nearly two years to complete, Lost in the Dream saw release on Secretly Canadian in early 2014. It debuted within the American Top 40, and earned them more rave reviews. They spent much of the next two years making multiple passes through the U.S., Canada, and Europe on tour, then set to work on another album. The band re-emerged in April 2017 with the 11-minute single "Thinking of a Place," released in conjunction with Record Store Day. The track would later appear on their fourth album, A Deeper Understanding, which saw release later the same year, marking their first album on Atlantic Records; Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Weezer) provided the final mix. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 6 Title: Barrel of Batteries Released: 2008-03-04 Tracks: 6 Duration: 14:51 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Set Yr Sights (00:50) 2 Arms Like Boulders (05:25) 3 Pushing Corn (04:04) 4 Toxic City #26 (00:19) 5 Buenos Aires Beach (03:29) 6 Sweet Thing (reprise) (00:44) |
 | Album: 2 of 6 Title: Wagonwheel Blues Released: 2008-06-17 Tracks: 9 Duration: 43:04 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Arms Like Boulders (05:20) 2 Taking the Farm (04:00) 3 Coast Reprise (03:15) 4 Buenos Aires Beach (03:23) 5 There Is No Urgency (06:19) 6 A Needle in Your Eye #16 (04:54) 7 Reverse the Charges (03:20) 8 Show Me the Coast (10:03) 9 Barrel of Batteries (02:30) |
| Wagonwheel Blues : Allmusic album Review : The first full-length by the War on Drugs is at once an album of its time -- indie rock as collection and collage of classic rock sonic signifiers that rank former tourmates Neil Young and Sonic Youth as equal inspirations -- and something that stretches beyond those expectations. That may sound like damning with faint praise, but given indies crisis of confidence in itself in the 21st century, finding all sorts of "real" rock to hold on to as a rear-guard action against pops all-devouring reworking of world-wide sounds, hearing a band that doesnt sound beholden to create some sort of huge statement with their album is rather refreshing. Adam Granduciels role as frontman is the kind of slightly strangled vocal signifier that could make one group of listeners think of Bob Dylan or Ian Hunter, and another of Half Japanese, while just as similarly the full band lineup seems to want to constantly move easily back and forth between an older set of sounds and a slightly newer one, with a definite bias towards the kind of lush guitar atmospherics that found a congenial home in the U.K. in the 80s and early 90s. (Though sometimes the balance is fully skewed, as with the post-shoegaze chime and shimmer of the instrumental "Coast Reprise.") A sign of the kind of mix-and-match at play comes early on with "Taking the Farm," which sounds as much like the Cocteau Twins as it does like a Tex-Mex romp, while "A Needle in Your Eye #16" might be the slyest Spacemen 3 tribute ever, taking all the elements from that band at its best (droney gospel keyboard vamps, blunt drumming, rapture via psychedelia) and recombining it with their own specific stamp thanks to Granduciels singing. In all, an unexpected delight. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 6 Title: Future Weather Released: 2010-08-16 Tracks: 8 Duration: 28:05 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Come to the City #14 (00:54) 2 Baby Missiles (03:29) 3 Comin’ Through (03:22) 4 A Pile of Tires (03:51) 5 Comin’ Around (00:55) 6 Brothers (05:13) 7 Missiles (reprise) (02:19) 8 The History of Plastic (08:02) |
 | Album: 4 of 6 Title: Slave Ambient Released: 2011-08-15 Tracks: 12 Duration: 46:53 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Best Night (05:30) 2 Brothers (04:29) 3 I Was There (03:49) 4 Your Love Is Calling My Name (06:01) 5 The Animator (02:16) 6 Come to the City (04:30) 7 Come for It (00:28) 8 It’s Your Destiny (04:49) 9 City Reprise #12 (03:05) 10 Baby Missiles (03:33) 11 Original Slave (03:11) 12 Black Water Falls (05:10) |
| Slave Ambient : Allmusic album Review : On their third album, the War on Drugs essentially continue to stake out their own particular patch of ground in 21st century rock & roll with an indie bent, nodding in equal parts toward older traditions and newer ones with a difference of two decades in between them, captured right down to the cover art, which is pretty much a companion piece to the art on their second album Future Weather. On the one hand, theres still a sense of world-weary wisdom and lost Americana as such at work from the start, as the extended breakdown toward the end of "Best Night" demonstrates, all silvery guitar jamming and sparkling piano following from Adam Granduciels reedy singing. At the same time the diffuse qualities of feedback, psychedelic glaze, and textural experimentation via everything that fed into what became shoegaze (not to mention shoegaze itself) remain key, audible in the opening chimes of "Brothers" and "Its Your Destiny"s spaced-out and exultant flow, perhaps most notably on the short instrumentals "Original Slave" and "Come for It." If the basic balance remains unchanged, the result has been a sound just enough of the War on Drugs own as a result, which gets stronger and even more droned out and powerful as the album continues. More than once they find just the right way to make it all click into something even more distinct, like the higher-pitched croon on "I Was There" slipping out over a gentle chug underpinned by darker feedback shadings or the Motorik-as-classic-rock-anthem "Come to the City," which practically begs a massive arena/light show performance (little surprise the later instrumental "City Reprise #12" takes that feeling and runs with it even more triumphantly). "Your Love Is Calling My Name" is the albums clearest barnburner, with a brisk, sharp pace and Granduciel riding-the-freeway-referencing lyrics with an appropriate easygoing elan, all while feeling warm and enveloping around the edges (and especially on the great instrumental break leading back into a wonderful, focused guitar part). | ||
 | Album: 5 of 6 Title: Lost in the Dream Released: 2014-03-18 Tracks: 10 Duration: 1:00:33 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Under the Pressure (08:51) 2 Red Eyes (04:58) 3 Suffering (06:02) 4 An Ocean in Between the Waves (07:11) 5 Disappearing (06:51) 6 Eyes to the Wind (05:55) 7 The Haunting Idle (03:07) 8 Burning (05:48) 9 Lost in the Dream (04:09) 10 In Reverse (07:41) |
| Lost in the Dream : Allmusic album Review : When Philadelphia-based purveyors of stripped-down, haunted rock perfection the War on Drugs came on the scene with their 2008 debut, Wagonwheel Blues, their sound perked up the ears of a new generation of soul searchers looking for a soundtrack. Summoning up the patron saints of FM radio rock, the band was constantly framed as an update to the wild-eyed sermons of Dylan and Springsteen or the summer-night abandon that Tom Petty perfected, all filtered through walls of decidedly indie guitar noise. Founding member Kurt Vile left the band to pursue his blooming solo path by the time of 2011s Slave Ambient, leaving key songwriter Adam Granduciel running the show completely for that albums well-received set of songs and heightened production. Work on follow-up third album Lost in the Dream began while the band was on tour in 2012, with the full process of writing, demoing, and recording stretching out over a 15-month period and employing five different studios in as many states. Instead of resulting in a piecemeal pastiche of discordant ideas, Lost in the Dream actually represents the most fully realized statement from the group thus far, with all ten songs gelling together with a sense of purpose and understated brilliance the band came close to before, but delivers in full here. Starting with the epic two-chord gallop of "Under the Pressure," Granduciel offers up song after song of incredibly restrained yet entirely engaged rock. The classic rock reference points led to a "blue-collar rock" labeling of the bands sound, and while there are undeniable callbacks to Petty, Dylan, and Springsteen here, as there were on earlier albums, the War on Drugs have come into their own with their sound. What comes on as simplistic or even predictable rock instrumentation always unfolds to reveal buried synth sounds, horn blurts, long ambient passages, and -- more impressively -- an unexpected emotional depth propping up the bare-bones songs. While "Burning" channels the same yelping frustration and working-class trudge of Springsteens "Dancing in the Dark," songs like "Red Eyes" and the gorgeous "An Ocean in Between the Waves" meld Jackson Brownes inward-looking sensitivity and Fleetwood Mac-like mysteriousness with an edgy depravity belonging to Granduciel alone. The songs are expansive, regardless of their tone, with the ten tunes sprawling out into almost an hourlong running time, leaving no stone unturned in their nuanced production and deceptively simple presentation. In this way, Lost in the Dream is the War on Drugs Daydream Nation or Disintegration; lengthy distillations of similar themes result in wildly different threads of song, all connecting again in the end. Its a near flawless collection of dreamy vibes, shifting moods, and movement, and stands easily as Granduciels finest hour so far. | ||
 | Album: 6 of 6 Title: A Deeper Understanding Released: 2017-08-25 Tracks: 10 Duration: 1:06:18 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Up All Night (06:23) 2 Pain (05:30) 3 Holding On (05:50) 4 Strangest Thing (06:41) 5 Knocked Down (03:59) 6 Nothing to Find (06:10) 1 Thinking of a Place (11:10) 2 In Chains (07:20) 3 Clean Living (06:28) 4 You Don’t Have to Go (06:42) |
| A Deeper Understanding : Allmusic album Review : The War on Drugs debut for Atlantic Records, A Deeper Understanding, is very much a follow-up to the groups critically acclaimed Top 30 breakthrough Lost in the Dream from three years prior. That albums notoriously meticulous blend of heartland rock influences, Bob Dylan, and a swirling dream rock constructed of Wurlitzers, tape effects, analog synths, and 12-string guitar, just to name a few components, is, if anything, even more expansive here. The Drugs recorded it as a six-piece with frontman/songwriter Adam Granduciel, bassist Dave Hartley, whos been in the picture since the band’s debut, keyboardist Robbie Bennett, drummer Charlie Hall, and multi-instrumentalists Jon Natchez and Anthony LaMarca, all but the latter of whom contributed to Lost in the Dream. Theres no compromising to be found on their major-label debut, the first of a two-record deal that promises complete creative control to Granduciel. (To underscore that point, the first track released from A Deeper Understanding was the over-11-minute "Thinking of a Place.") The sets ten tracks drift unhurriedly over a course of more than an hour. Included along the way are a few additional timbres, such as the skittering electronic effects and stucco guitar textures of opener "Up All Night," the unexpected glint of glockenspiel on the bass-propelled tune "Holding On," and the saxophone on "Clean Living" with its sound distorted like a reflection. At first, these details hint at a possible redesign -- then just as quickly they don’t, as ears adjust to the broader palette. They weave their way into the hazy reverb, restrained pitch range, and shimmering, engulfing atmosphere that manages to never overpower Granduciels gentle ruminations on relationships, overcoming, and just coping. Though theres nothing here to grab headlines, A Deeper Understanding reclaims and explores the distinctive soundscapes, vastness, and haunted psyche of Lost in the Dream, and that in itself is significant. | ||