The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBWiMAu3uII

This track is fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeaDE1magRk

This one hasn't grown on me yet.

looking forward to this. "holding on" sounds like he's channeling michael rother

the groove that 'thinking of a place' drops into at the end of the lyrics @ 9:00, i could listen to 10 more minutes of that

also like how the first 30 seconds of 'holding on' is a microcosm of all the war on drugs-isms

at first listen, "thinking of a place" feels like one of those long boring breezy jams that there were too many of on the last record. second single is a rocker but it might feel a bit too war on drugs by numbers. i these dudes though, there will surely be a ripper or two on here that i'll love. i've probably listened to "red eyes" about 300 times and it still gets me excited to this day, so they got some magic going on for sure

i trust these dudes*

Lost in a Dream grew into being my favorite album of all-time, so yeah, kind of looking forward to this.

the dream, not a dream. Apparently didn't like it that much :)

man holding on is so good. i love how incongruously upbeat and bouncy it is.

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

Feeling this too.

My favourite of the new tracks, I think. I suspect he's found his sweet spot and is refusing to budge, that sweet spot being 1984, with him gazing into the peeling ceiling paint of a haunted school hall.

"Thinking of a Place" is the fantastic one!

love them, but the boring drummer/drum machine...why, oh why?!

I read Moby's (gross) memoir, and he talks about recording Animal Rights with a drum machine, then hiring a session dude to re-record all the tracks, and then he and Moulder deciding to stick with the janky machine to keep things intentionally off-balance.

to me the drum machine is a crucial part of the aesthetic

i'm recycling my tweet but the new song answers the musical question: What if Bob Dylan joined Division Bell-era Pink Floyd?

With or without flashing jewel box light?

surely the choicest of all floyd eras

I'd fav that tweet if I could find it

says a guy who bought the DB reissue

Just listened to most of Division Bell cuz of this thread and JEEZUS is that shit terrible

all i can think of with this album title is that stupid kate bush song

new song is awesome this is going to be a great album

kinda bummed they're mostly playing arenas at this point, but then again last time I saw them they definitely channeled some Bruce

I kinda like Division Bell and Endless River

I thought the new song was good that Kate Bush song is great btw

that sweet spot being 1984, with him gazing into the peeling ceiling paint of a haunted school hall.

I wonder how many times he's listened to "I'm on Fire"...

I like the new songs but the overall hype is exaggerated. They are recycling ideas and it's becoming hard to distinguish between the songs themselves.

https://youtu.be/z_qaKlf2TzU

I love all of the releases from this album. I can see what some people are saying in that it all has a similar thing to it but I think that's precisely what the group should be delivering at this stage in their output. It's the perfect realization of their sound at this moment in time.

sounds like john mcentire produced this and recruited eric claridge to play bowie. awesome in other words

he sounds like John Mayer.

really looking forward to this, all the new songs growing on me with every listen

http://www.thewarondrugs.net/firstlisten/

If there has to be a comparison he sounds more like Bryan Adams

i hear alasdair maclean with a dylan twang

More of the same ... and that's OK.

well

i love "strangest thing"

that's good. So is the first track.

The first song is glorious

I do like this, but don't quite understand the guy getting defined as some sort of perfectionist, a trait I keep seeing popping up in profiles. Really? Anxiety about releasing something, or saying it is done, does not make you a perfectionist.

he objectively does not sound like John Mayer

what about subjectively

He at best hypothetically sounds like John Mayer.

I stand by my Dylan joins 90s Pink Floyd

90s floyd didn't groove like this unfortunately

The band chose an apt name: like most drugs, they're fine in moderation.

That's what Dylan brought to Pink Floyd.

In seriousness, the Pitchfork article on their roots in heartland synth is pretty otm.

Reminds me of Street Fighting Years by Simple Minds.

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)

xpost Moka I'd actually been thinking of posting something about them as the classic rock version of trance or ambient stuff

Most of the reviews on rateyourmusic are saying that it's nice music to leave in the background. I found this one funny:

Best New Hold Music
i can't believe the 11 minute song, thinking of a place, was by a decent margin my favorite song on here. i guess poorly written 6 minute songs can feel longer than an 11 minute song.

i liked strangest thing too but, point aside - let's square up about something here. there is no fucking way that any more than 1/4 of the people who attend their concerts know what song they're playing at any given moment if it's not Red Eyes. how the hell would they know? they're trying to force as many songs into the same narrow aesthetics as possible and succeeding quite well at it. i even liked their previous album a bit, but they're clearly not really trying here.

I suppose opinions will vary depending on what you want and classify as good music. There's people who think being bland or unmemorable is more offensive than well, being willfuly tasteless.

i quite liked the album before but this one is totally forgettable, just passing me by without any hooks.

This album is decent, but I feel like they could've gone in a direction a little bit more interesting than ambient rock. Hate to pull the "first album is the BEST" card, but I feel like Wagonwheel Blues (and parts of Slave Ambient) went places they never really came back to. Like, the two sprawling songs on Wagonwheel Blues (There is No Urgency, Show me the Coast), had a little bit more edge and aggressiveness. Both instrumentals on that album were pretty solid as well (by contrast, every instrumental since has been pretty dull, so it's probably for the best he ditched them on this one).

He owes Petty a royalty for Up All Night imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5BJXwNeKsQ

i really, really enjoyed this album. i do sort of agree that it's background music and not really memorable but that's OK.

I was pretty wary of this at first; as the tracks came out I thought he was slipping into parody (if, indeed, he hadn't already). But I've listened a few more time and it's really growing on me. Or maybe it's more accurate to say I'm growing into it. With LITD, it was 'Burning' and 'Eyes to the Wind' that initially affected me, but the (breathing) space of those more ambient later tracks are equally full of steady magic. It's proving the same with the new one: I find myself almost craving the defeat of 'You Don't Have To Go'.

Less poncey version: it's alright this, innit.

I truly love his sound but what a lot of you are saying about this album is how I felt about the previous one (which seemed like a redundant iteration of the classic Slave Ambient). So Im not in a hurry to check this one out.

slave ambient is great, a nice reiteration of the classic wagonwheel blues. he's like the feelies and real estate to me at this point where i want rehashings of that perfect jersey/philly sound forever

You are right, reggie "Slave Ambient" is very good, I just listened to it for the first town. That full 80s sound is there already though I think it is even richer on "Lost in the Dream" which I still prefer. That album reminds me more of shoe-gazing. Live they were quite average on the "Dream" tour I thought. I think in the end I prefer the Kurt Vile guitar sound to their keyboard heavy textures.

Town=time

This album is the opposite of a grower. I seem to like it less and less each time I put it on. Even the songs I initially thought were great are becoming merely good.

i listened through and don't remember a single thing about it

dream pop

The new album is rubbish, I totally agree. But I discovered "Slave Ambient" and it is great. They already have created their dense sound and there are tunes as well. It is almost as good as "Lost in the Dream" whrre they refined the formula I'd say.

'your love is calling my name' is basically perfect, that's about all the WoD i need

Cutting 25 minutes out of it would be a start. Doesn't need to be 66 minutes long.

In Chains is an amazing song for knocking out the last mile of a punishing summertime run, right up there among classics of the genre like Edge of Seventeen

Hate to pull the "first album is the BEST" card, but I feel like Wagonwheel Blues (and parts of Slave Ambient) went places they never really came back to.

Yes!

Saw them play last night in Austin, it was a pretty great show! They played as many songs from Lost in the Dream as from A Deeper Understanding. I was hoping they'd take a song like Pain or In Chains and stretch it out a bunch... they only really seemed to get loose with Under the Pressure. But they definitely aren't playing the same set night after night... I stuck around because people said the night before they played Thinking of a Place as the encore, but at my show they did a cover of Tangled Up in Blue!

wow, was it good?

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.

the line

"I resist what I cannot change" seems kind of banal yet deep, it really resonates w/me for some reason

The Dylan cover was pretty good, yeah! I'm not too familiar with the original, but TWOD version was pretty rollicking. Apparently in the past they've covered Jethro Tull? Would have liked to have heard that.

i swear i can't figure out if this band is kinda bland or incomparably brilliant, but i think it's one or the other, no in between

maybe that's the magic?

i have the same problem as you, alpine static. i think they have their moments of brilliance. the problem being they try to extend those moments to minutes and than it all becomes pretty dull.

saw them live a couple of weeks ago. The stuff off Lost in the Dream was fantastic, the rest... not so much.

I was staggered that they were playing two nights at the Apollo in Manchester. I've seen New Order play there!

I used to like them.but i hate the new album.

I don't really like the band name, but I liked the song "Strangest Thing"
I dig turtles, too.

What's inside a turtle?

understanding juice

I've also spent many years (intermittently, obv) trying to figure this band out -- even played a bunch of shows with him when he was nobody and he seemed like a cool guy but the sets didn't make an impression. It's like a band that started its career in its later-career burnout phase, or maybe more like post-burnout comeback phase where they start to sound pretty good again but a lot of the older musical idiosyncrasies are gone and there's less energy? Yet it's that concept carried so far that it almost becomes interesting again?

He relies a little too much on the same few vocal melody tricks/chord progression ideas. But there's something to be said for just developing a sound and really sticking to it I guess.

Every song sounds like the video should be aerial footage from a seaplane low over the ocean fading into a closeup on the singer's emotively singing face in black and white, just that image sequence repeatedly

A lot of people cite Dylan and Springsteen, but I'm reminded a lot of Bob Seeger doing "Against the Wind," even though it's a bit different both sonicly and in vocal style.

It's like a band that started its career in its later-career burnout phase

I like this band but this is the best and most accurate description of them I have ever heard

It's pretty much how I've described my feeling about Tame Impala as well. The classic rock giants entering their 80's phase.

found the exact visual I was picturing for the videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hr64MxYpgk

like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9LgHNf2Qy0

on paper this band sucks, but i love em unreservedly

they only know one song and i love that song. but i do not like to listen to it ten times in a row in one evening. in other words live they suck.

You mean that song that starts on the IV/ and then it goes to the I
That sounded pretty good man/let's do another one
But I bet you never expected the song to go.../to the V

Saw them last night at The Fox in Oakland. I'm a big fan, but the show was still pretty much a snoozer. They literally brought their entire studio with them. Adam Granduciel had like 50-ish guitar pedals, and there were three different keyboard areas! It all added up to a giant wall of beautiful sound, but there was zero excitement. They also had a beautiful light show, which made up for some of the overly-mellow vibe, but I was waiting all night for some powerful moment that never came.

sounds pretty much like what I imagined

This album is the opposite of a grower. I seem to like it less and less each time I put it on. Even the songs I initially thought were great are becoming merely good.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Friday, September 22, 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Apparently this album is the epitome of “opposite of a grower” because I was listening to Lost in the Dream earlier today and couldn’t believe WoD hadn’t released an album since 2014... only to find that they released this album in 2017. I have no memory of it - but according to this threat I listened to it, liked it at first and then grew to dislike it. And now I’ve successfully erased it from my mind.

the art of pretend forgetfulness 2007, since i can't find the other thread

according to this threat

good typo, ILX spirit.

Thanks to this thread I do recall now that they released an 11-minute songs as their lead single. But I still don’t remember how it goes.

no one does

Maybe it's still going.

Thinking of a Place remains, to me, an awesome song.

the new live album is really great

yup. had me at the track listing, for obvious reasons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Lf31f7gRw

the best filmed version of An Ocean In Between The Waves is from Pukkelpop '18, some guy says in the comments here (I haven't seen all of them but I agree that this is possibly even better than on the live album) & starts at 8:25 here (first two songs are Nothing To Find (intro missing) and Pain)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjY0-7ptghk

Having acoustic guitar on the rocking/upbeat numbers live as above is really smart, adding that strumming texture to it as you would on record

I was fully prepared to sneer at this because of some misplaced idea that it'd be overdubbed and polished so much as to basically be a studio album. Well, another bullshit opinion destroyed: Eyes to the Wind just completely took me out at the knees.

Even though it's mighty fine and impressive I still miss so many songs they could have selected for the live album. (Holding On, Nothing To Find, In Chains, Burning, etc etc) There's a couple of great sounding full shows out there that do contain them (Northside and Sziget for instance), I wonder if keeping this limited to 1 CD and his referring to Bruce's 1975-1985 is a subtle hint to bootleggers, to please release an alternate version?

Pppp

?

album is incredible

also a deeper understanding is my fav of their albums, this thread is insane

I think I butt dialed that last post from Zing, sorry.

that's exactly the post a butt would dial too

Butt dialling, pianississimo.

J0rdan S otm

thinking of a place is still the best song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qKCDJAFkWo

they might be a band which, jeez you'd maybe have to go back to the 70s? whose best album is a live album

a little premature to say that obv but I really really like the live album so far

Oh I guess Phish maybe? you'd have to ask a fan, I don't know that much about them

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

The new live album is, well, what you'd expect really. The version of 'Burning' is fucking great.

this is the equally great second half of the double album Live Drugs should have been all along, imho

Nice! They're doing another 3 shows for The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia at Johnny Brenda's, their local venue in Philadelphia - "A Drugcember To Remember" (long sold out, of course).

https://johnnybrendas.com/event/a-drugcember-to-remember-the-war-on-drugs-night-1/johnny-brendas/philadelphia-pennsylvania/

Some of the shows are on youtube - several guests (Kurt Vile, Craig Finn for instance) and also this guy! (the high vocals are very high, but to still be able to sing & play the guitar like this at 78... )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Byn-niCSr5Q