War on Drugs

been luvin "taking the farm" and "arms like boulders". haven't heard the whole thing yet, though the rest of the EP left me pretty underwhelmed

My AMG mutterings

given indie's crisis of confidence in itself in the 21st century, . . .

What does this mean (what crisis of confidence)?

Poorly phrased -- when isn't it with me? -- but it's meant to address the (apparently) inevitable dying out of the 'rock and roll will change the world, MAN' belief. And if I weren't completely tired and out of my skull at work right now I'd say more.

Jordan - yeah, the EP is underwhelming considering there are only about three real songs on it. The LP is a lot more interesting, in that they let loose with the effects pedals and drones, but never in a gimmicky way. The songs have propulsive quality to them that other shoegaze bands lack.

Tired/out of my skull, too. I haven't felt like there was a ''music can change the world'' belief in my lifetime. Eighties music/culture forward is detached, too smart for its own good, soaked in irony, snide and adolescent. Nothing wrong with any of that, to a degree, but it isn't a ''we'll change the world'' philosophy.

Nirvana didn't think it could change the world. It didn't care.

(xp)

i guess i'm mostly referring to the real songs on the ep, like "buenos aires beach" which i thought was just kinda long and not really interesting. i like the propulsiveness of "taking the farm"/"arms like boulders" and i dont remember the other ones having that kinda momentum

interesting idea - worthy of its own thread methinks

x-post

Jordan - I see your point. I've grown to really like "buenos aires beach", but the first couple of times I heard it I was annoyed from expecting a loud snare drum to kick in at the chorus that never came.

Hold Steady+ Wolf Parade = i like it!

i predict a 51.2% chance of them being indie darlings on their next record.

i kinda think of them as a bit too trudgy for that - like they're not quite exotic enough.

Good live though- I saw them at last year's Green Man and they brought the drone.

the dude's solo thing is super droney

i love "taking the farm" and "arms like boulders" unconditionally. "buenos aires beach" is awesome as well.

for real. i picked up the lp from the funny dylany ragamuffin singer guy after seeing them and was surprised that it was kinda straightforward and guitary - live they sounded kinda like suicide.

not exotic enough/modern enough or retro enough to be totally hip but who knows about these things

is it 'show me the coast'? that was pretty great live.

xp what's the guy's solo thing?

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12953-constant-hitmaker-god-is-saying-this-to-you/

taking traditional american rock and combining it with spacerock is an original formula as far as i can tell.the result could be better in terms of songwriting,but between those 9 tracks are some good and enjoyable highlights, so they might develop their skills into something more constantly good in the future.

I didn't really care about War on Drugs before, but I really like this Kurt Vile record a lot, including that song :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhDoYxvLe_U

I thought this record would catch on. Surprised it didn't, cause Taking The Farm and Arms Like Boulders could both have been hits.

it didnt catch on cause 3-4 good songs on a record are not enough

otm

The new one - which is Kurt Vile-free, if that means anything to you either way - is pretty great.

Baby Missiles is one of the best things I've heard all year.

diggin slave ambient

kinda sounds like a shoegazey tom petty

Highly anticipating this

love it.

fucking great album

shoegazey tom petty = im sold

I like this new album, but not nearly as much as the last EP. Definitely prefer the version of "Brothers," re-recorded here, on the EP. Overall, too much shoegaze, not enough Tom Petty, I guess. Maybe it's a grower.

"too much shoegaze, not enough Tom Petty" = perfect, I'll love it then. (I'll be reviewing it for the AMG.)

It's a solid album. I like it. Just don't love it. I loved the EP.

yeah i think if i hadn't heard "brothers" or "baby missiles" (best song on the album) before i'd be revisiting it more often. still a good record. definitely jamming it next road trip.

They seem to be going in a spacier direction, nothing as straight forward as Arms Like Boulders from Wagonwheel Blues. Is that a correct?

Yep.

Definitely has something to it, gets more zoned out as it goes. It almost approaches Church territory at a couple of points, though I prefer their singers. I still think they're not quite a truly great band, but often a surprisingly good one.

Secret weapon would have to be the instrumentals. All very good and VERY well sequenced throughout.

This new album is so fantastic.

yes

^^

they probably didn't need to rehash the two songs from the EP but it's welcome to hear them all the same

baby missles's keyboards and production sounds like born in the usa-era bruce springsteen.

^^^^ very otm

thought this line from the pfork review was really great

it's as if the Spiritualized and Springsteen albums filed alphabetically next to one another in your record collection had melted together on a hot August afternoon.

Perfectly explains my reaction to the album as well (in that I have no Springsteen album to melt).

im sure the pitchfork reviewer has a few Spoon records in between the two

i liked this better the more it went on, was not impressed at first. think this is more space rock than shoegaze however as it's pretty mellow.

best night is just about perfect.

I'm starting to hear Baby Missiles on satellite radio. In a better world it would be a hit.

This has catapulted directly to my top ten of the year, I love it.

it's excellent--totally lives up to the promise of the debut.

Here's where I admit I haven't heard the debut yet. I kind of didn't get into these guys until I got into Kurt Vile last year. I need to check it out.

Don't know anything about these guys but the premise is intruiging.

haven't heard the debut yet.

The debut has 2 of their very best songs, Arms Like Boulders and Taking The Farm, which is still my favorite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki4xBXucjSQ

This is great!

agree with jon, working its way to my tops of 2011

The EP > new one > Wagonwheel

IMHO

Seeing them tomorrow night! Delayed a plane trip to do so. Psyched. Will report back.

Nah, I think the new one is better than the EP, if only because its sequenced so well. It just really flows and holds together in a way that makes it really hard not to just cherry pick tunes from it to hear. Wherever I start, I just end up listening to the rest of the album until it ends.

http://alteredzones.com/posts/1876/war-drugs-prep-expanded-slave-ambient-cs/

"To allow the group's experimental tendencies more breathing room, Slave Ambient is receiving a complementary second release in the coming weeks on (appropriately) shiny red cassette. Side 2 features six new freeform movements that strip away the bombast, revealing the sonic aquifer of fluid drones, synth explorations, and celestial textures that flows underneath. Version one of Slave Ambient was made for speeding down the road windows down; the cassette version was made for the long ascent up the space elevator".

awesome, thanks for the heads up!

this record might be even better than Smoke Ring For My Halo, which is a real achievement and a challenge to top for their (and Vile) next record.

this album fits nicely amidst blue collar punk S/D (bouncing souls etc) and Post-Boss American Shades of Working Class Rock Music Thread type stuff imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMqWSFNC1jU

lol @ Produced by Urban Outfitters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErQH5-1ot4w

otm

saw these guys on sunday -- pretty solid show, though having purling hiss as your opener is going to make even the greatest band sound a little bit sluggish.

My copy of the tape mentioned upthread finally arrived today. Looking forward to hearing Side 2...

new track sounds familiar but still good
"taking the farm" from the debut is still my favorite

I hope this record is good because it bumped a bunch of my recording sessions

http://m.soundcloud.com/secretlycanadian/the-war-on-drugs-red-eyes/

Good news!souns great! Like Slave Ambient part two but that's fine with me.

Is it Adam ob the cover of the record?
So is War On Drugs just a moniker of his name?

I guess so...I always liked to think of them as a band but maybe it's just Adam.

Did Kurt Vile used to play with these guys? Anyone know what tracks/record specifically?

Kurt Vile used to be in the band, the wikipedia entry is pretty good as far as what his contributions were.

Very often I cannot tell these guys apart - although KV stresses the stoner ennui a bit more, while War on Drugs have a bit of a Springsteen thingy.
Anyway, although Slave Ambient was one of my favourite records of these past 5 years, I'm not really sure whether I need another album from these guys.

Youre last sentence makes no sense

Love this band's songwriting, but I wish they'd change their production style. The gauzy atmospherics doesn't do their songs justice.

xp - really? You've never had that feeling where you love an album but don't need to hear anything more from that band?

Without the gauzy atmospherics they'd basically just be Kurt Vile mk II and who wants that?

agreed - the gauze is the main draw, hence why Slave Ambient >> first lp

Like, other than Baby Missiles, I'm not sure "songwriting" is one of their main strengths at all.

The first and last song presents great song wriying as well

this album is so fucking rad

meaning the new one

New album is just brilliant. So warm and comforting, even though it's pretty miserable. As if Springsteen and the E Street Band had made an album with Mark Knopfler in between BITUSA and ToL, but all concerned happened to have been listening only to Neu at the time.

Can't wait to hear this. 'Slave Ambient' was a big record for me.

Interesting you mention Knopfler as Dylan's 'Series of Dreams' (which he plays on) sounds like the prerequisite for War on Drugs.

Yeah excited as well - so this is Slave Ambient II, I gather (not a bad thing)?

More like he realised Tiny Missiles was the best song on Slave Ambient and based the album around that … Lots of lazy Knopfler lead guitar lines all over it.

Oooh, that sounds great. Definitely ready for a new album by these guys

it is much more minimalistic than Baby Missiles.
it's good, though Slave Ambient had more hooks. this one seems a little unfocused maybe.

BTW, i see more Springsteen doing 80's Sophisti-pop than Dire STRaits

The single is fantastic, if it's all in that vein I am 100% down with this project.

it's not all rippers but the ones like "red eye" are all killer

I mean I really, really like Slave Ambient as well so I'm happy with some balance here.

i won't be surprised if they like Destroyer's Kaputt.

i discovered the war on drugs because they opened up for destroyer on the kaputt tour, thought they sounded like a rad space rock tom petty or something

the sequencing on this album reminds me of their live show in that they got the bangers out of the way at the beginning and then just let the jam ride for the rest

"rad space rock tom petty " is exactly how I describe this band to people

I'm only five tracks in but this fucking rules.

Also Dire Straits are just about the only thing left from the 80s to be properly revived but they're all over this record.

Eyes To The Wind is amazing, how many instrumental lines are there weaving in and out of one another by the end?

One of the things I love about the record is that it's packed full of hooks, but very very few of them are chorus/vocal hooks – they're almost all guitar lines that are used incredibly judiciously for maximum impact.

Must write up my Granduciel interview …

This is all up on yo***be now ...

Been listening all morning, really enjoying it. the 4 min ambient outro to the first track kills the pace a bit though.

almost all of the songs have this problem on this record, but i can live with that

is this streaming anywhere yet?

it's on grooveshark. was listening to it yesterday.

thx!

yrwlcm!

Hearing a bit of early Spitiualized in the ambient sections

listening to the album stream on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0PxpilZvjc

this is great. it's a cross between tom petty solo, dire straights, and 80s-era springsteen. if you had asked me, before listening to this, if i wanted a "nu" version of any of those acts, i'd have said "no." but i love this.

opening of burning sounds just like rod stewart's young turks

going in for my third listen today, but i think i'll probably start on the second half. i think the lengthy spaced out jams on the first side are awesome but they kind of make me burned out by the time i hit the other side.

best thing i've heard this year.

After having spent a week with this, I am inclined to agree.

yeah. though i wish they used a real drummer instead of the monotonic drum machine

yeah, i picked up on that, too. wonder why they chose a machine (when it clearly makes a difference).

the sax on the haunting idle is just great. and the intro reminds me of some police song whose title i can't call to mind.

(sorry; maybe the sax is on eyes to the wind; i'm not really focusing on individual songs right now)

That kind of mechanistic stiffness is essential to the sound I think, it keeps everything else tightly reined in.

Wow, I love this. The first album in a while where I couldn't wait for it to end so that I could immediately listen to it again. I mean:

dire straights, and 80s-era springsteen. if you had asked me, before listening to this, if i wanted a "nu" version of any of those acts, i'd have said "no." but i love this.

Double/triple OTM.

I'm liking it too though I'm currently inclined to say Slave Ambient was better - I feel like there was a bit more variation on that album. I think someone said it above but the new one is basically "Baby Missiles" many times over.

the new one is basically "Baby Missiles" many times over

People keep saying this but it's not actually true, unless you're just not listening to Under The Pressure, or Suffering, or Eyes To The Wind, or the title track, or...

the impeccably smooth production is reminding me of (whisper it) Kaputt a little bit.

This really gets my blood running. Never really figured out slave ambient (probably didn't play it enough), but this feels way more fleshed out to me.

In addition to those already mentioned, the record makes me think of "Starfish"-era Church, and 80s Dylan, the latter especially with regard to vocal phrasings and the Knopfler collabs.

(whisper it) Series of Dreams is the best Dylan-song!

Ha, I think someone said that on a thread I read the other day, but I can't remember if it was a recent or old thread. Was is you?

the euphoric glide of "under the pressure" reminds me of "more than this" a little bit. i wasnt into "slave ambient" but this album is very very lovely indeed.

x-post: lol, nope, don't think so, but I'd like to know who it was.

Yeah I can definitely here some Roxy in there (xp). I thought Slave Ambient was pretty good but this album is so great.

Mule/Frederik - I think it was me who mentioned 'Series of Dreams' up thread. I've brought it up before when discussing War on Drugs because, for me, it's remarkably prescient of their sound.

I haven't had a chance to listen to the new one yet. It's sitting on a parcel on my desk baiting me right now (along with a replacement copy of 'Wagonwheel Blues', I had to return the first one cause it sounded like shit. Typical Strictly Canadian unfortunately).

just listening to "series of dreams" now for the first time. yeah good call!

Xpost. So it was actually this thread? Lazy of me. Thanks, IA.

Anyways, the song really is a blueprint of the WoD's sound, especially on the new album. This is a good thing.

Man, am I the only one who thinks Suffering completely kills the flow of the album? So boring and SO LONG.

That's hilarious, because listening to it this morning that's where the album really starts to click for me. It reminds me of the pretty noodling side of Dire Straits, like "Skateaway" or the pretty coda of "Tunnel of Love."

I mean, as if it wasn't obvious:

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

Or here, starting at the 5 minute mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmQ0ns-hXf4

this is very nice but it makes me feel weird, like i always felt like that particular 80s rock sound of disappointment with life was for something that only happened to middle-aged 80s dudes, when it's coming from a whatever-aged 2010s dude i don't know what the feeling is anymore, time is out of joint

overall i think the vibe is wistful but positive, i dunno. granted i'm at work and am not really focusing on the lyrics much. or at all

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/the-war-on-drugs-gets-ready-to-play-the-big-rooms/

“I started going off the rails a little bit in my own head, getting a little too sucked in,” he said. “I learned a lot about anxiety and depression and how you probably have it your whole life, but you never really know it. Then eventually it starts to make your life smaller and smaller and smaller.”

Granduciel’s anxiousness created a vicious circle during the making of Lost in the Dream. Overthinking every detail caused him to constantly second-guess himself, which only increased his anxiety, which only made him second-guess himself more intensely. Just as with “An Ocean in Between the Waves,” a lot of songs cycled through several variations before circling back to one of Granduciel’s initial ideas. “‘Suffering’ went through four or five different incarnations, and then I ended up just going back to the original demo I recorded, which was a drum machine and a Rhodes piano, and we ended up building on top of that,” he said.

xpost In 1985, Springsteen was a whopping 35 years old. Dunno how old Adam Granduciel is, but Dan Bejar (for point of reference) is 41. Springsteen wasn't even 40 when he did his middle aged marriage falling apart "Tunnel of Love."

Ha, OK, I think Granduciel is 34, which puts him at Bruce c. "Born in the USA" age.

this is very nice but it makes me feel weird, like i always felt like that particular 80s rock sound of disappointment with life was for something that only happened to middle-aged 80s dudes, when it's coming from a whatever-aged 2010s dude i don't know what the feeling is anymore, time is out of joint

― j., Tuesday, March 18, 2014

the war on drugs: making america safe for middle-aged 80s dudes

like me!

If this was *just* a record that sounded like middle-aged 80s dudes it wouldn't be as interesting. The whole motorik/Spiritualized/spacerock element of their sound is crucial as well.

(In other words, it sounds like middle aged 90s dudes as well)

there's this pizza place i used to order from in college, that i would rarely actually go to, but it was always an odd experience in the 90s because the place was still decked out in like

http://image0-rubylane.s3.amazonaws.com/shops/752391/74.1L.jpg

and 80s stones album covers and an ambered jukebox, so since i was only a kid in the 80s (listening to michael jackson and men without hats or whatever alongside don henley on pop radio) most of my experience of the 'adult' perspective on 80s culture always has that kind of hangover aspect to it, like from its lingering on in places that had made their arrangements with life a while back and didn't have the need or luxury any more of styling new ways to be

i'm glad 2014 has found its random access memories.

i guess...i am mostly ok with this album's reference points (though i didnt give a crap about dire straits or bruce in the 80s, why should i now?) and execution, but i feel really out of step with the hype.

i found the roxy comment upthread interesting, i wanna relisten with that in mind.

(but yeah matt dc is right of course—and like granduciel

When Granduciel talks about his musical background, you realise it's not that surprising a combination. He grew up in Dover, Massachusetts, listening to classic-rock radio, then had what he calls his "aha moment", hearing The Perfect Prescription by Spacemen 3 playing in the Mystery Train record shop in Boston. "There's a lot of older musicians who say your whole life making music, you're really trying to get back to that first couple of things you liked when you were a kid. And as much as you might like to think you're not, you really are."

(story in the guardian)

—mid-90s was teh time of spiritualized, nu-wave of krautrock revivalism, etc. for now mid-30s me too)

I think the conflation of meat and potatoes rock like Bruce, Dire Straights and Dylan with the more amorphous, er, mashed potato rock of Spacemen 3 is what makes this interesting, just as what Spacemen 3 did to the Stooges and Suicide made that band interesting.

All my early thoughts kinda remain the same about these guys -- couldn't care much (or, really, at all) about the classic rock side, am perfectly down with the zoned and out of it side.

No one need "care" about the classic rock, but that doesn't make it not obvious, recognizable, essential and unavoidable an ingredient.

It's also that he's successfully isolated what those artists have in common in essence if not in sound - the spacerock aspect overlaps with Springsteen (open-road momentum and euphoric peaks and troughs) and Knopfler (textures and guitars that sound like they're from outer space). Viewing at it from that angle, this record feels like it's in the centre of a totally natural Venn diagram. It never feels forced.

Matt DC very much OTM.

Yeah all very nice and all but what I'm trying to point out is that I don't need that intersection to be happy and I've had enough Springsteen/Knopfler/Dylan etc in my life already. Also, I'm not unfamiliar with this band and what they do at all! I'm the second or third post on this thread from when it started in 2008, I've reviewed them for the AMG, so, hey, give me a LITTLE credit. And I grant that combination makes you all happy, but the difference between, say, a fellow Springsteen nut like Jason DiEmilio of the Azusa Plane and Granduciel is that the former fully took off to the cosmos and multiple directions from there before he ended up on his downward spiral from hell, whereas the latter lets himself go a bit but then gives me the type of thing I have no real affinity for or interest in on top of it. At their best they hit the levels of the Church, as I've said before and others have mentioned, but the Church have been way more consistently interesting to me -- and sound better when it comes to the singing -- for a long goddamn time.

so what you're saying is get off my lawn etc etc

If you can take the classic rock hero worship with you, sure! Can you drown the Cult of Brooooce while you're at it?

how about we take those and leave you one (1) bag poop, aflame

i'm a few songs into this thing and not hearing all that much knopfler tbh. springsteen yes, also tom petty, robbie robertson and lindsay buckingham... i don't mind it, it just kind of potters along in its own groove, kind of like jj cale in that respect

thing about dire straits is their songs are all totally based on actual hooky licks, where as this seems much more of a groove thing with the guitar mostly just providing ornamentation

he uses a fuzzier guitar tone, but the noodling at the back of "an ocean in between the waves" is, i would say, very knopfler-esque.

having grown up immersed in the 80s, certain lead guitar tones and production tropes just sound so trite to me, and when he hits on them i can't help but cringe. i also think this effect may be cumulative for me- he can use only so many of these tricks at a time, until he adds another and a tipping is reached.

the fact that some of his guitar runs are not _more_ knopfler-esque makes me wonder if he simply is at the edge of his skill there.

well, you know what they say, guitar playing naturally settles for the highest level of knopflerity

i guess if this album were really the random access memories of 2014, he woulda got _mark knopfler_. possibly pharrell.

I dunno, hitting the classic rock beats that Ned doesn't need is what I think sets this stuff apart. We have enough Spacemen 3 gauzy gospel reverb merchants. You can call it hoary or hokey, which is fair enough, but it's no more so at this point than what this would sound like without those influences.

Yeah straight spacerock and krautrock homages are more boring than anything at this point, if only because so many of them just seem to be slavish recreations of a sound.

AOY contender for me, but this album sets up such a conflict for me. For months, I've been all "omg I can't believe you ridiculous popists are favorably comparing shit to Wilson Philips, how regressive" but as soon as some band starts openly referencing cheesy shit from the 80s I actually like, I'm all for it. There's probably a lesson in here someplace.

Anyway, this album is great, but I stand by my earlier criticism of the 'drums.' Not sold on it (yet?).

Surely we aren't done talking about this album already?

Today I had this playing in the car while I was running errands around town and every stop took so long because I couldn't seem to leave the car before the end of whatever song was playing, so I'm, like, sitting in the Trader Joe's parking lot jamming "Disappearing" and just blissing out. It's that kinda album, I guess.

Chris Weingarten ‏@1000TimesYes Mar 17 -- The War on Drugs: In case you ever felt like you wanted a Bryan Adams song to never end.

lol whiney

i like that, whiney sort-of rides on the spirit and drive of War on Drugs' sound and takes his opinions to new worlds of wrongness. in fact I think he's discovered a new dimension of lousy opinions. i can imagine he returned to our world surrounded by an aura with eyes sparkling to deliver that one to us.

The thing about that joke is that there are quite a few other artists that still would have sold it without being completely wrong.

ease up. everything whiney does, he does it for you.

i dunno i feel like rock media is still addicted to this idea of the THE NEXT BIG ROCK REVOLUTION or thing that's going to change

rock is a mature art form at this time, you have to approach it like how ppl approach jazz - certain artists structure their music or have certain sonic qualities or ways of playing that you find appealing, nothing "big" is ever coming, and i don't care if it does. i think there will always be bands that understand how to be a band together, to play and write in ways that appeal to me, to find a sound or qualities that are worthwhile

i think war on drugs does this

but yeah like if you're looking for some revelation or w/e it's not it

rock is in the details

i mean, isn't all pop music, at this point, fairly mature and innovation/revelation is either "in the details" or in small incremental moves?

i think the media around this one is very much coming from the artist-matures school of journalism

ums maybe you are suggesting there is a little residue of dissonance around that idea, for rock audiences (or their media overlords)?

well i think (and i'm p verging on Ott territory) but yeah i think those grand narratives - elvis on ed sullivan! the beatles conquer the world! woodstock! nirvana kills hair metal! - still resonate w/ppl...and obviously there's still a lot of money/resources invested into building buzz around the next big thing...or like NME seems to need "rock is dead! rock is back!" shit every month still....

i think the media around this one is very much coming from the artist-matures school of journalism

this could be, i haven't read that much of it

basically if you're a dude like myself who was raised on 80s classic rock/mainstream radio and then went indie then went weirdo you'll probably be p happy w it. or if the idea of dire straits goes kraut appeals to you, this seems like a good version of that idea

like on the walking on a pretty daze thread lots of people said kurt vile is boring! and he kinda is boring! but i like it, i like sinking into that whole diffuse stoner vibe and letting the songs flow by, but i couldn't dispute that this album or that album could be boring to ppl

i'm amazed by a lot of pop and rock music still. i hear a lot of little innovations still. but i can't recall the last time i've heard something truly "revelatory."

it's true: i want a bryan adams song that never ends.

whenever the music industry wants to make rock seem like a viable force the Foo Fighters always end up involved in some way

ew!

foo fighters is one of those bands that feels like a backing band even when they're not jamming with some rock legends at an induction ceremony or awards show

two days a wrote a brief post about this album for application to some "death of rock" thread i found, but i didn't post it. the gist was that while listening to this album i became convinced it represents the last final ossification of rock, the last permutation after which rock has lost all cultural currency or relevance.

i didn't post it because 1) everyone here is more knowledgeable about music than i and 2) it's some bullshit even if it turns out correct.

rock music won't lose all cultural currency or relevance ever, because (a) "rock" is a very broad umbrella term, so there's lots of room for variation and (b) the audience is always changing, and new audience members are experiencing the genre for the first time (as they grow up).

rock and roll was just a fantasy anyway. how long can any dream last .... ?

life is just a fantasy ...

~lost in the dream~

cultural relevance is p overrated

i do like how this album makes me remember the 80s that don't seem to get remembered as much, not new order's 80s or the cure's 80s or afrika bambaataa's 80s or duran duran's 80s, but the 80s of terrible jeans and weird sweaters and bruce hornsby and late period steve winwood albums and pink floyd bedroom posters and eddie and the cruisers and those fake bands that played at party scenes in r-rated cable comedies etc

all that stuff, at least for me growing up near a farm town, was really the 80s as i experienced it..the other stuff seemed like little exotic things that you could maybe see a passing reference to in a hip gas-station purchased rolling stone in the front of the book

^^^ summer of 89

i welcome this millennium's glut of "nu" 80s band. viva la 80s.

white dudes with moustaches in fedoras playing saxophone

i saw some weird old tribute to soul thing on PBS the other night, billy preston was the bandleader, must've been 87 or 88, the whole band besides billy was these jobber white dudes with moustaches and fedoras and the bassist was some dude dressed up like a "punk rocker" from a police academy movie or someone who escaped from sigue sigue sputnik, they would have a bunch of classic soul dudes come out and do their one big song for a bunch of white ppl dressed for a fancy ball....percy sledge came out and killed it on "when a man loves a woman" and had on a tuxedo and a perfect Soul Glo afro that really shined in the lights, then sam (I think it was sam maybe it was dave) came out and did a song and pulled up some woman in a really terrible dress and they sexy danced really awkardly, it's like now THAT's the 80s i remember sorry interpol

ahh yeah the late'80s for me involved listening to too much "roll with it" era winwood

the '80s music I remember around chicago was like one long coda/homage to the blues brothers' "everybody needs somebody"

lots of the melodies on this remind me of "Highway 29" by off ghost of tom joad, esp some of the changes/vox in eyes to the wind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db8uxbYC5uU&feature=kp

xp -- basically, the eighties that led up to and includes Road House, and yet said movie transcends.

i feel like sam elliot could ride off into the sunset to one of the long outros on this album

Am I the only one who thinks about Spoon while listening to this record?

They kinda do to Springsteen what Spoon did to Billy Joel..

i think thee oh sees on major downers. there's even some distorted reverby john dwyer "woop!"s going on

kinda weird how this band name wasn't already taken when you think about it

Yeah it's a good name

It's a great name and when you google it you might learn something, too!

Amazing how they surpass Kurt Vile now.
They set the bar higher for his/their next record.

I alwats think about those two acts together..

Are they still friends?

Whenever I see the name my mind first goes to the Barenaked Ladies song of the same name, as opposed to the actual War on Drugs.

the first line in the AllMusic review does not persuade me to listen to this one (I heard the debut in '09, liked some, trashed it).

cmon alfred

soul search with us

generation next

if you can groove to the ache and poignance of "tunnel of love" you might appreciate this one

dunno if I can "do" poignance.

puff tuff alfred

smoke through brother

Just got my copy brb soul searching

i find that this album sounds a lot like kurt vile's stuff. the songs are pretty long, quite melodic in a sunny sort of way and there is a lot of repetition which in this case i like as it engraves the music slowly in my mind. like kurt vile there is definitely a kind of hypnotic flair to this. the computer drums suck big time, but that has been mentioned upthread. the singer by the way has a voice not too different from kurt vile's, it's not a great singing voice but the music is definitely not about singing. somehow this reminds me more of bruce hornsby than bruce springsteen, but even in the early 90s i tended to confuse those two.

Did I really hear an adult with a frontal lobe sing "Lost in the dream/just a silence of a moment/It's always hard to tell" and proceed to get tangled in harmonicas and echo-y guitars? He also sings "As I struggle with myself right now/As I let the darkness in" or some such thing in the next song, swathed in more echo. I don't hear Dylan or Petty or whoever in this crap -- I hear wooly-headed nonsense, sung by a guy who thinks he's R&H-era Bono fronting Wild Nothing.

Lyrics don't really matter w this IMO

I don't get the bono thing at all

why wasn't this new album on a new thread? anyways diving in right now. first song reminds me of Destroyer vocally and now playing the second song and this is Arcade Fire, almost to a T. this is going to be fun.

not everything needs a fucking new thread

true but i think bigger things should have it's own thread. i'm liking "Suffering" best so far.

fucking love this album

Um. I agree. This deserves its own thread.

Came to say the exact same thing Mordy said.

i think i love this too

i have never listened to this band before (didn't even know the kurt vile connection until this week), but i am really enjoying this album!

There you go, now it's an all-purpose War On Drugs thread.

Lyrics don't really matter w this IMO

except when I hear them clearly

better cover art:

http://i.imgur.com/eDwMF.jpg

What chu talkin' 'bout, Alfred?

V rockist Albert for shame
But seriously I can't really see lyrics being even your fifth takeaway from this

i'm hearing more of a funk about the gooch's latest recess abuse in this

I didn't even realize this album even had lyrics until Alfred pointed them out.

those strummy gooey guitars do the talking first

this record put me in a pretty extreme state of bliss last night. i'm always pleased when ilm jumps on this sort of thing rather than deriding it (kaputt being the recent parallel in this regard i guess, but this is even deeper in my wheelhouse than kaputt was)

I like it a lot, but I've given up on it being the next Kaputt. Kaputt sounded impersonal, like something created by a group without central guidance. This never stops sounding like the thought-process of one man. It stays 'authentic' that way, which bores me a bit.

i listened to this on a walk today, on my headphones, it was soooo much boomier and '80s'. i like teh home system sound better.

this isnt as good a record as kaputt

it isn't and it doesn't sound "eighties" to me: it's more redolent of late 2000s echo-laden mush like AnCo.

Hey now people. I've been on board with these guys since Wagonwheel Blues. Loved Slave Ambient too. I heard the first half of the new one today and I cannot remember hating a record so much on first listen. All gauzy atmosphere, no songs.

yay!

That's cool, most music is all songs, no gauzy atmosphere.

this isnt as good a record as kaputt

― everyday sheeple (Michael B), Thursday, March 20, 2014

high bar; no shame.

and really, kaputt wasn't as good as rubies, so there's always something better.

rubies, after all, got an ultra-rare 10 from pitchforkmedia.com.

rubies got 8.5 from pf: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8970-destroyers-rubies/
kaputt got 8.8, this one got 8.8 as well

woosh!

can't be. i heard, from v reliable sources, that pitchfork was gonna give rubies a 10.

"cannot remember hating a record so much on first listen. All gauzy atmosphere, no songs."

I thought more or less like you did but changed my mind after few more spins.
Give it a chance I'd say

This doesn't have Kaputt's gloopiness or the Destroyer dude's greasy voice or that whole inept indie gulf between aspiration and achievement though. I'm more or less down with what Destroyer tried to do and like loads of stuff in that vein but thought the execution was terrible.

despite not being a fan of any of the influences (petty, bruce etc.) i fucking love this record.

Destroyer was more about atmosphere/pastiche and less about Melodies.
Also it was more pop and less rock.

Kaputt that is

I don't hear Springsteen or Petty at all, in part because they had riffs and sharp rhythm sections.

review of this in hot press (irish rock mag, bit of a rag tbh no-one takes it seriously anymore) said it was frustrating and brilliant. says that "under the pressure" is an amazing opener but then is ruined by 2 or 3 minutes of "ambient nonsense". said some tracks are great but others are boring and sound like mark knopfler b-sides.

it sounds pretty 80s to me in the sense that it could easily be one of those sub-paisley underground, mildly psychedelic desert rock bands like true west or wild seeds but produced by brian eno

Thing is, the guy has written hooks in the past. Taking the Farm & Arms Like Boulders are particularly good. Maybe the hooks will emerge on more listens but right now for me, it's barf out.

the last track sounds like it belongs in the closing scene of some cult film, to be enjoyed by Teens for years to come

i haven't really heard this record yet but for the last two the 80s influences were really specific to me--they were driving rockers with lots of processing, so songs like boys of summer and dancing in the dark.

you won't find those here

Yeah, "Boys of Summer" is the song that keeps coming to mind when I listen to this album.

Burning= dancing in the dark

ha, those are two songs that i was reminded of too but they're degraded copies rather than pristine replicas

who plays guitar on boys of summer?

Mike Campbell, sorely needed here.

i think the WoD songs are actually better than the originals

ok, Alfred, you don't like the record, we got it.

to recap:

alfred says he doesn't like this band and says he won't like this record
alfred decides to listen to the record
alfred doesn't like record therefore anyone who compares it to anything he likes is wrong

Succinct. Your grade: A-

can we go to recess now?

Apples first.

maaaan this sucks *kicks can*

http://www.principalspage.com/theblog/wp-content/uploads//2011/05/Teacher_gift_apple_thumb.jpg

dude nails the yelps of "barbarism begins at home," a favorite 80s jam. people hearing j-marr and v-reilly in these licks are right on

just looking at this thread now and i feel like pretty much every reference point suggested herein is accurate somewhere on the album, so well done team. i think it is really very good overall. i won't say some tracks couldn't lose a minute or so, but generally so much to enjoy.

I think part of the charm of this is that the dude is nowhere near the level of Campbell/Marr/Knopfler. It's like a Xerox of a Xerox.

i think the charm is that it evokes the 80 MOR but just a weird blurry stoned memory of it

Last post completely OTM.

aor on drugs

^^ redundant, no?

"Burning" is my favorite, and the only one on which I heard the "eighties" influence, here in the form of the synth from Belinda Carlisle's "Mad About You."

i don't understand what's supposed to be wrong with the drums

another 80s influence: dude sounds just like Paul Simon on Graceland, something that's been at the back of my mind until I just grasped it a second ago

Funny you should bring that up. As the story goes, a lot of "Boys of Summer" but specifically the drums came straight from the Campbell demo, because Henley was not happy with the way real drums sounded. I guess this guy pulled the same thing on a few tracks, sticking with the demo stuff rather than trying to recapture the vibe in the studio.

xpost

well, generally, comparisons to Petty and Springsteen need to mention that Max Weinberg and Stan Lynch drummed for them and not a metronome.

Boss demo! WoD template!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgKi2bPatmU

Fuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgKi2bPatmU

Argh can everyone stfu about the fucking drums?

seriously i just don't even understand what the complaint was, i listened, they're drums

all i know is 'SOME PEOPLE don't like the drums'

i think the charm is that it evokes the 80 MOR but just a weird blurry stoned memory of it

haven't heard this record, and the above may well be otm, but it makes me want to kill

I think alex in mainhattan said "Computer drums suck" or whatever. I feel like the metronomic motorik quality is a lot of what I like about this, though.

oh well that's just bonkers, don't mind me (or alex in mainhattan)

dominique don't kill me pls

If I hadn't heard the record, from that description I'd be expecting weedy chillwave shit, but it does make sense.

xpost

haha don't worry! Just sick of the "weird blurry stoned" thing -- seems like an overused Instagram filter for indie music

xp yeah that sounds like every other Ariel Pink description

Someone's already mentioned this above, but the similarity between "Burning" and Rod Stewart's "Young Turks" is about as strong as you can get without being a sample. I played it for a friend and they had a very negative reaction—immediately mentioned Young Turks. I still love the song though.

Damn. I read that note in a review too and still don't hear it; closer to Belinda to my ears.

it's very clear imo i joked about it on another thread last week

those damn drums. listening to them is like being hit by someone with a hammer on your head. i don't think they have a metronomic quality. that would be jaki liebezeit or even more so klaus dinger. drums played by a human will always have small rhythmic shifts, little imprecisions, which you don't even hear consciously but which make all the difference between dead computer beats and living, breathing human drumming. the same goes fo metronoms i think. they are not 100% regular. they seem to be but the pendulum is hitting the air, it interacts with its environment which computers don't. and the metronome will get slower and slower the closer it comes to being "emptied".

love the drum machine

xpost to Josh in Chicago

A bit about how he made the tracks from an interview I did with him a few weeks ago (from transcript, hence typos)

"A lot is to do with how I start the song. I start them at home; I don’t have an idea and go into the studio with the band, and it doesn’t become democratic. Even though we became a band with Slave Ambient, I didn’t ewant to to go into the studio and say “OK guys, here are some song ideas. Let’s record them live!” I love playing keyboards and doing drum machines and I love building up and idea. I wanted to create the illusion of a great dynamic rock band without having to go down that road, and keep sonic control. So starting everything in my home studio in the same way: write the general gist of the song on piano or guitar, kind of layer it. Start with some rhythmic ideas and build it up" …

Hard to know a song’s finished?
"Totally. Also it’s the thing I love. It’s really fun – you get this window of time when you get to do what you love to do, and then you gotta go promote it. I love playing, too, but watching the song go on a journey is awesome. I was listening to demos on the airplane of where some of the songs started and where they ended up was amazing. I tried painting for a long time. I wasn’t very good, but what I liked was the act of painting – pitting a lot of colours on, scraping with a knife, filling in the white spaces with brighter colours. I feel that’s what we do with the music – keep building it up until it feels like a landscape."

Force yourself to stop?
"Sometimes. We do so much in mixing, that what I have to force myself t o do is create a mixing date. This time I’d booked two weeks in Brooklyn – and that’s where you make those decisions: let strip it down. I’m usually pretty good by that point at letting it go. There were still a couple of things I wanted to change, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to bring it back up and risk losing the magic. So you don’t have to pull it out of my hands, but getting it to the mixing stage is hard, because I love adding. I love recording. I like exhaiusting every idea I have. You can di that with nusic – you can go down a bad road and come back."

I went into seclusion with this record. My diet was sparse but nourishing. At first they said I was crazy. "Dell, you really can't live on Rice Crispies and cashew nuts alone". I smirked with the all of the chutzpah of 41 years of quarter-muffled dreams and a thesaurus whose glue had been long since been transformed into the children of bookbugs.

Granduciel's warm tones spoke of many things to me. Deferred responsibility from shopworn, overfolded received wisdom, a furlough from powder drugs, a taking of refuge in the soul alone, pure abandonment to the inexorable momentum of individuation, a deliberate commitment to resisting the easy arc of lovelessness in all of its contemporary forms.

When I at last woke up my eyes were crusted over with what I can only embarrassingly label as unalloyed wisdom. Embarrassing not in its content, but in the reflection of sheer ignorance on my part that such an eventual revelation implied. Like sliding on the headlamps within a showroom-fresh car for the first time, my entire world, i.e., my raw sense of experience, was soon, almost startlingly so, bathed in soft amber, and shampooed with the essence of new car smell promising me that in fact there is no other way but forward, not following, but actually being the beatific flow of awareness, manifesting as the alleged objects and personalities contained therein. Once the lush upholstery had received its initial crush from my peripatetic frame, I found that then even birdsong exists seemingly mostly to herald inner growth. Buds and shoots.

Granduciel has taken the grim vulgarity of the eighties aesthetic and all that such implies in its Nagelian horror, and infused Philip Michael Thomas' pastel slacks with actual shakti... a cabana surrounded with living waters. As ever-deepening easter egg colors transformed the linen fabrics into a landscape of saturated indigo and crushed violet, Granduciel has invited any comers to partake of his smorgasbord of simultaneous gratitude and homily of there never being such a thing as too much sugar, just as the energetics of moonbeams transform all grain into the butterflies and rapid heartbeats before running out the door as sun sips just over the horizon. From Rice Crispies and cashews to spontaneous grandeur and ghee, life prescriptions such as "Red Eyes" masquerade as humble songs while fixing themselves onto the node of our Being which in very fact places ourselves at a very precise point in the actual cosmos, the ACTUAL world ecology; like a pushpin stuck onto a world map with representations of nadis replacing the equatorial fundaments.

"Was there a substitute for the soul?" Granduciel ponders and earnestly asks, stretching out the question teasingly like confectionary at a taffy pull in late August... There is only one way to find out.

I like the fighting abt whether or not some song off this sounds like some stupid song I don't want to hear again anyway

Albertine, I would like to agree to agree with you that he was pushing it a little with the Young Turks "tribute". But my problem involves that I like the original so much.

man the guitar tone on the solo in 'suffering' is all-consuming

yeh it sounds like a copy of talk talk spirit of eden melting under the sun

Young Turks is so great, b/c if you hear it casually while rassling heads of iceberg lettuce am Supermarkt you think that it's like all about Patty Plymouth and Billy Crescendo pretending to live out a Bruce Springsteen tribute band song. but it's actually a song about the soul giving birth to new expressions. It's about how time is the boon ally of freedom and not an oppressor. the space where the psyche unfolds. songlyrics.com/dell

I think maybe I understand Alfred'z reservation about the lyrics. But maybe he is doing too claustrophobic a read of them? And ignoring the other signifiers present in the overall music that is being given to us.

When I listen to this record, I hear someone who is operating from such a great space that he feels eminently comfortable with exploiting ridic tropes, and wielding them in a redemptive fashion. "Surrounded by the night". Yah, silly perhaps on first reading, but I think it's an expression of working one's way through the murky unconscious? I do. And if you use the word "soul" in yr lyrics, then obv you are putting yrself ut there for riducule, but... "to beat it down/to get to my soul/against my will" to me bespeaks a thirtysomething's grappling with the project of individuation.

All utterances are obv. projections of the soul, and naturally it's easy to dismiss things when ppl are working in overused idioms -- a lot of ppl in this thread brought up that destroyer record as a ref point. But, there's a thing where someone can play a certain chord or say certain words, and just by virtue of the energy that they imbue it with, it communicates something that hasn't been done previously. so like, Joe Shmoe (sp?) singing a line can be radically, worlds away from say, Elvis singing it... I hear this record, (LiaD) similarly, as being a redemption of cliches that most ppl don't wanna deal with let alone revamp, much as our psyches overflow with refuse that none of us want to deal with in the immediate sense. But everything discarded becomes absolute gold in the crucible of the psyche, as Karl and Jesus attested to. And maybe it is somewhat a Philly thing. If you have lived in a place that is so inimical to the development of everything that equals you then you are forced back onto yourself and the actuality that constitutes the ground of your being.

"Carl", ooooops

Hmm yeah, I can see that. Btw I'm not dismissing this rec at all and wld like to hear it, just finding a lot of the thread v funny

There are so many songs I hated in the late eighties that I have come to love at this point, so...

I take back what I said about everything sounding like "Baby Missiles" now that I've gotten to know the record better. That said, I still don't think there is as much variety here as on Slave Ambient. This is really dragging for me by the final third. I like all the extended instrumental bits on these songs but I wish they'd flow into each other a little more--to make a greater whole. Instead each track sort of goes on for a while and then peters out, and then Granduciel starts all over again with the next track. It gets a little tedious. Again going back to Slave Ambient, there is such a great run from "Your Love Is Calling My Name" to "The Animator" to "Come to the City" to "Come for It." This album sort of reaches toward that level of flow but doesn't actually attain it.

wait a second -- is the drummer for war on drugs the same guy who has been playing with chris forsyth and the solar motel band? because that guy is awesome.

war on drugs has a new drummer now

oh. i've only heard one song by the war on drugs (from this new album) and it sounded alright, but i was thinking that if the drummer was the same guy i saw, he was not playing to the fullest of his ability on that song, for whatever reason.

rock is a mature art form at this time, you have to approach it like how ppl approach jazz - certain artists structure their music or have certain sonic qualities or ways of playing that you find appealing, nothing "big" is ever coming, and i don't care if it does. i think there will always be bands that understand how to be a band together, to play and write in ways that appeal to me, to find a sound or qualities that are worthwhile

i think war on drugs does this

but yeah like if you're looking for some revelation or w/e it's not it

rock is in the details

― Little Nicky Pizza loved that rascal Rust (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, March 19, 2014

yup, see, e.g., ↓

Zoo Music ‏@zoomusic666 -- If you believe ppl shouldn't "reinvent the wheel" stay out of the music business.

those seem to opposite sentiments to me?

omg . . . you are right. and i haven't even been drinking.

wait, have i? no.

just spun this for the first time while working yesterday, and for some reason, i'm getting heavy "walkin' in memphis" vibes from the opening track. ...am i that far off?

i do like how this album makes me remember the 80s that don't seem to get remembered as much, not new order's 80s or the cure's 80s or afrika bambaataa's 80s or duran duran's 80s, but the 80s of terrible jeans and weird sweaters and bruce hornsby and late period steve winwood albums and pink floyd bedroom posters and eddie and the cruisers and those fake bands that played at party scenes in r-rated cable comedies etc

all that stuff, at least for me growing up near a farm town, was really the 80s as i experienced it..the other stuff seemed like little exotic things that you could maybe see a passing reference to in a hip gas-station purchased rolling stone in the front of the book

― Little Nicky Pizza loved that rascal Rust (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, March 19, 2014 1:48 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

white dudes with moustaches in fedoras playing saxophone

i saw some weird old tribute to soul thing on PBS the other night, billy preston was the bandleader, must've been 87 or 88, the whole band besides billy was these jobber white dudes with moustaches and fedoras and the bassist was some dude dressed up like a "punk rocker" from a police academy movie or someone who escaped from sigue sigue sputnik, they would have a bunch of classic soul dudes come out and do their one big song for a bunch of white ppl dressed for a fancy ball....percy sledge came out and killed it on "when a man loves a woman" and had on a tuxedo and a perfect Soul Glo afro that really shined in the lights, then sam (I think it was sam maybe it was dave) came out and did a song and pulled up some woman in a really terrible dress and they sexy danced really awkardly, it's like now THAT's the 80s i remember sorry interpol

― Little Nicky Pizza loved that rascal Rust (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, March 19, 2014 1:56 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love these posts btw

the bassist was some dude dressed up like a "punk rocker" from a police academy movie or someone who escaped from sigue sigue sputni

pictures, some dude, or didn't happen

I take back what I said about everything sounding like "Baby Missiles" now that I've gotten to know the record better. That said, I still don't think there is as much variety here as on Slave Ambient. This is really dragging for me by the final third. I like all the extended instrumental bits on these songs but I wish they'd flow into each other a little more--to make a greater whole. Instead each track sort of goes on for a while and then peters out, and then Granduciel starts all over again with the next track. It gets a little tedious. Again going back to Slave Ambient, there is such a great run from "Your Love Is Calling My Name" to "The Animator" to "Come to the City" to "Come for It." This album sort of reaches toward that level of flow but doesn't actually attain it.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Sunday, March 23, 2014 11:27 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See, for me, War On Drugs is this album preceded by Future Weather, which I thought was far superior to Slave Ambient (I realize I'm in the minority here; no one ever seems to talk about that EP). I think I agree with a lotta folks here that LITD is a sort of culmination of the band's myriad strengths (so far), but then, I also like their slow-burning ones as much as the "Baby Missles"-y ones ("Suffering" is a favorite on the new one). If anything, I think there is more variety on this one than the last. Not necessarily in the arrangements, but in the songs, absolutely.

Otm on Future Weather > Slave Ambient

hahahaha of course! lee atwater!

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (February 17, 2014) – This March, PBS viewers will be treated to the world television premiere of a never-before-seen historic concert featuring Sam Moore and some of the biggest names in blues, soul and rock history performing their greatest hits. Recorded during a live Presidential Inaugural Concert Event in 1989 for President George H.W. Bush, the video and audiotapes of this concert were presumed lost for nearly 20 years after the untimely death of Lee Atwater, the concert organizer and host.

I like the Bryan Adams vibe :(

I hear more of that than of The Boss, but that's probably because I grew up listening to the former and not the latter.

Um...recs?

I'm hearing a lot of peak-era Live on the new album, esp. "Suffering"

i mean, isn't all pop music, at this point, fairly mature and innovation/revelation is either "in the details" or in small incremental moves?

― Daniel, Esq 2, Wednesday, 19 March 2014 17:49 (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is what I'm up against huh

listened to about 15 minutes or so of this album and it was much, much more dull than 'spacerock tom petty' made it sound :( tom petty had some fukken jams. anyway, opinions vmic, keep on keepin' aor, ilx

this is what I'm up against huh

― imago, Tuesday, March 25, 2014

this is what you face, in this war on the war on drugs.

yeah this was p boring i thought

Peak-era Live, eh

This war's over

who won?!?

Noone wins a war

well, the right won the war on christmas, with almost no casualties.

*pre-total obscurity Live

xpost

Man, is there any other ILM thread that is this jam-packed with simply naming every last influence and/or reference point? If this record is at all worth a damn I think it's time to move on from this line.

(Also, Live comment ridiculously off the mark.)

listened to about 15 minutes or so of this album and it was much, much more dull than 'spacerock tom petty' made it sound :( tom petty had some fukken jams. anyway, opinions vmic, keep on keepin' aor, ilx

― imago

my boy

the space rock thing has been overplayed a bit I think, it doesn't sound like e.g. Hawkwind! also pgwp is on the money, personally I think the record transcends its influences, but it's difficult to pin down exactly why, perhaps that's the problem other people are having too?

jesus christ some indie rock band remembers to write a melody and you guys shit your pants

it's like if shaq remembered how to make free throws

or if like Shaq decided to act

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aCIarBvhDw#t=37

was bummed they didn't play this at the show the other night

Haha. '80s AOR G.D. OTM!

someone on my FB wall a couple days ago predicted they'd cover "Touch of Grey." Need to send him a kewpie doll.

Man, is there any other ILM thread that is this jam-packed with simply naming every last influence and/or reference point?

The 1975?

video is from 2011 xp

So you're saying he was really ahead of his time?

My mother likes it.

At long last: music that we both love..

this record is deceptive. like when you first got rubiks cube and you were all like "aw hell, no way am I touching something inspired by hungarian physicists

but then over breakfat,the potatoes warmed themselves and you were all like "ah hell this record is so good, he is revealing the soul, like jung in the red book.

disappearing is like the masculin/feminin response to HAIM's forever

a meditation on the soul, in both its provisional and eternal aspects. what apprehends is forever, the other stuff is ornament. as was, there was a lot of detriment in my blood and that of others, but in listening to this record i realized that I had hugely erred and manufactured a sense of self that is in fact incapable of preventing love's revelation, no matter the assumptive arguments. If you want something from the place then it will come unto you but be careful what you wish for.

A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectable
Yet nothing is invincible

If we share this nightmare
Then we can dream
Spiritus mundi

If you act as you think
The missing link
Synchronicity

That reads like Sesame St

holla back jung'n

Why the Police lyrics idgi

Ask the butterfly that just died in Scotland.

*stares into the distance*

well the comedown here is easy/like the arrival of a new day

this man is a poet, and not in the Reader's Digest sense. He is talking to the Soul, which is presently down in the workshop, coated in sawdust and the sweat of lacquer

if way quieter some of the best hypno-grooves since the most recent wooden shjips

the intro of "burning" REALLY has a lot of "young turks" in it.

if nothing else this has to be the greatest driving record of the last 10 years.

i only heard slave ambient because of LITD, and i don't see how anyone could prefer the latter over the former.

both are kind of samey, but there is an overall tension and vibrance that drives slave ambient along. LITD seems listless.

gah can you tell i'm not a music critic.

i love how burning is all rod stewart, bruce springsteen, dire straights, and tom petty-ish within the first minute.

it's really weird that this band has engaged me so much, i feel like it's on some pressure point of my aesthetics, like i somehow have to wrestle out some kind of justifiable opinion about it. relistening to LITD track by track now, i need to recalibrate from comments above. anyway, under the pressure and red eyes are def not listless...

Hunt3r I am right on the same page with you - both your first comment and the last one too. Definitely find Slave Ambient to be superior but feel some kind of urge to break LITD to its elements--find the trees in the forest.

"eyes to the wind" sounds a lot like a latter-day jayhawks jam, one of the ones not sung by gary louris, like say "bottomless cup"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGs9BQzJvds

agreed with you guys xp i'm listening to this a lot more than i planned in the name of figuring it out

it's hard to figure it all out

life just keeps movin on

Hearing "Red Eyes" a lot on WXRT locally, which means it's only a matter of time before WoD is as big as DMB.

I didn't care at all about this band when they were new but yesterday a dude who was into them back then told me to really give the new one a chance and wow. Like this record a lot, and I generally don't listen to, you know, indie rock

yeah this is my favorite record in quite a while

Like this record a lot, and I generally don't listen to, you know, indie rock

― Now I Am Become Dracula (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, April 29, 2014 1:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"never get high off your own supply"

I'm still trying to reconcile it, but there's def. some overlap with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5eP95OsxqM&feature=youtu.be

It's that mix of epicness and grandeur and vagueness and exultant release.

actually sometimes his delivery reminds me of chris bailey in the 80s a little madness to be free/all fools day period. the music, not much.

didn't care at all about this band when they were new but yesterday a dude who was into them back then told me to really give the new one a chance and wow. Like this record a lot, and I generally don't listen to, you know, indie rock

― Now I Am Become Dracula (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned),

I feel like I lost a member of the family.

we accept you we accept you one of us

listening to under the pressure really does have a lot of that pagan place big music vibe

I don't know what to tell you Alfred this is good music. it's not as good as Ava Inferi but most people don't really give a shit about Ava Inferi, what can you do

Don't worry Steven, Alfred has been pretty intent on being a total drag in this thread from the get go

Am I wrong to wish they'd drop the synths and go full roots rock? Don't answer that, I know what you will all say. But I want more Taking The Farm and Arms Like Boulders, and less emoting over soundscapes for 10 minutes at a time.

Am I wrong to wish they'd drop the synths and go full roots rock?

No, you're right. I want them to go full Dire Straits.

Have you seen them live? I have not, but I wonder if they get closer to rock on stage.

Going straight roots rock would rob them of the thing that makes them interesting and unique, it's all about the combination of earthiness and floatiness.

otm

Don't feel like they're that good at either of them but only get by on being sorta interesting

synth vs. no synth is a red herring, i think some of you want them to write tighter songs which three albums in they're pretty clearly not going to do

more like war on interesting music

Listened to this based on seeing it in SNA constantly and it is not bad but it really lacks any tunes or hooks, just feels like lots of atmospherics and mood without any great dynamics. I really like the textures and I think that trying to hang them on "big songs" would be missing the point but as it sounds just now it feels a bit anaemic. But it is the kind of album that's interesting enough to make me want to persevere and listen a few times again to see if it opens up, and I think it's going to sound better in the summer for some reason.

Can't imagine listening to this band anywhere else than in a car on a highway

i just sit in my chair but i do pretend i'm in a car

i roll the windows down too

No, you're right. I want them to go full Dire Straits.

This record sounds more like Calling Elvis than Tunnel Of Love.

Fun thread to read. upper mississippi sh@kedown otm throughout. I kind of feel like it diminishes this band's music to only listen for the influences. I get why people do it, though, because we haven't really heard this particular mixture of influences before, so it's interesting to try to pinpoint exactly what they are channeling. For me their music appeals more as part of a long continuum of trance-inducing repetitive music (along the lines of Cave, Loop, Wooden Shjips, Spacemen 3, etc.) just one that happens to occasionally evoke a certain strain of east coast bar rock of the 80s. I really like this album, I think it's more consistent than earlier stuff, and the hooks are stronger, but so far nothing on it tops my favorite songs on Slave Ambient ("It's Your Destiny", "Original Slave", "Come to the City").

my album mix this morning transitioned from tony williams on miles' 'miles smiles' to the cymbals opening 'lost in the dream', didn't miss a beat

After several weeks of going crazy trying to figure out which song the melody & progression of "Eyes to the Wind" remind me of, I finally realized it's Belle & Sebastian, "My Wandering Days Are Over" (for some reason I had been thinking Pavement, I think because the production reminded me a little of CR,CR)

I read the recent interview w him about mental health issues he was dealing w before during and after making the record and it prompted me to listen to it again. Y'know how you go through these phases where maybe you listen to something fairly obsessively and then have to take a break from it b/c for whatever reasons even thinking about it makes you sick.

Anyway, I feel like he really did contact the Advocate that is present and available to all of our psyches -- the aspect of ourselves that argues for a more realistic and vaster picture of who we actually are. In our culture we don't have a vocabulary for, or instilled readymade spots for shamanic leanings to occupy -- we don't have a healing vocabulary. We do best at being cynical and inventing increasingly withering putdowns to express the disgust and unease that we feel at being incarnated in these forms. Anyway, maybe this is all insane projection on my part, but I think that the WoD guy contacted some of that vibe and managed to put it on his record. I don't grasp that feeling from many other records. The sense of wrestling w one's demons and catching them in that moment when you are looking into their eyes and seeing them as the helping spirits that they are. The actual grit in the oyster and all that junk. It's an ecology; we need poison as much as we need medicine.

i think that's a very interesting juxtaposition, del, between 'more realistic' and 'vaster'

i would normally be inclined to hear the blissed-out sound, and the motorik version of american road music, with less realism, somehow - because of associations with escapism, flight, abandonment

but there does seem to be something realistic about the sound (not just the lyrics), something about life/the world that's being intended by it

"blissed-out sound, and the motorik version of american road music" - thanks for nailing their sound so succinctly. i'd been struggling to describe them to people so far

oh i stole it from a review, no doubt, they all say that

the motorik version of american road music

I get what this means, but still, that is literally this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/A74-D-front-250.jpg

lol i don't hear ANY tom petty in THAT

i saw them last night in the huxley's in berlin. in the beginning i stood in the middle of the hall and it was so loud that i couldn't hear the music. then i went back to the end of the place and it was better. but their main problem to me seems that they only have two or three good songs. all the slow ballad stuff is rubbish and even most of the more uptempo songs seem soulless and tuneless. the live version of "under the pressure" was awesome though. slowly buildig up from the mist of guitar feedback, the kicking in and peaking when the saxophone joins in, then an improvisational burst out of free-jazzy cacophony and then back to the forward moving theme and finally a slow fade-out of vague guitar noises again. what really turned me off later on though was the drumming. the lead singer/guitarist started the drum machine with his foot and then the drummer just did playback. the drummer as actor, how crap has contemporary rock music become? in the end i left during the encore of a ballad. i don't remember the last time i left a concert before the end. the other decent song they played was of course "baby missiles".

If you think they have 3 good songs why did you go to the show?

I saw them at Austin Psych Fest this year and to me they seemed like a COINTELPRO sham band the Feds would use for infiltrating a scene with unintentional hilarious results.

Not buying whatever bill of goods they're selling.

If you think they have 3 good songs why did you go to the show?
that was a revelation that came over me after the concert...

Love these guys - but i'm not sure I would like to see them live. Seems to me their songs are there to get you lost in something (the road, the landscape, etc), but maybe wouldnt work as well if focused on intently and exclusively

They are fantastic live, you should go and see them if you get the chance, they start with the big rock songs and get gradually dronier as things progress.

i've come to terms with the fact this band is fundamentally crappy in some way but they hit some weird childhood ideal of FM 80s classic rock i can't help but be drawn to.

if you can't figure out what makes them fundamentally crappy then maybe they're not

i guess crappy's the wrong word....vacant? empty?
put it this way, i don't ever want to see them live because i feel like it would ruin something about them for be, expose them for what they are. but the records create some illusion of a remembered sound, sort of acidhead bruce hornsby does crazy horse type vibe

but like i said i do find myself listening to them

these guys are like balearic petty, i like em

needs a sequencer

yeah agree i think moving even farther towards boys of summer/arc of a dancer type vibes wouldn't be a bad idea

Arc of a diver you mean right?

effortlessly

Yep diver the winwood album

just got Lost in a Dream - baffled by all the Spacemen 3 refs in the wiki entry, I detect no discernible influence. If anything this sounds like Don Henley's 80s solo work, comment about 80s FM rock upthread very otm

i hear 80s dylan and mark knopfler

i know they aren't the most beloved band around here (or maybe the hater are just more vocals) but gosh, Lost in the Dream is such a fun summer record.

Still love "Taking the Farm"

this new one seems kind of...cheesy? "there's a darkness over there, but we ain't going"

I like it. It's not a great departure from the sound of LITD, which is fine by me. I still wish the drummer would learn to play fills. I mean, just give me one, dude.

Assuming the song will be on the album in addition to being released for RSD?

sounds great to me

saw them live a year ago and (perhaps I've mentioned this upthread) to my stoned surprise it totally rocked, channelling Bruce Springsteen a lot

I haven't listened to this one yet, but I saw that it's 11 minutes long. How much of that is outro? 7-8 minutes? This fuckin' guy and his outros.

new song

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

so i was listening to Lost in the Dream again today and it struck me how much it sounded of a piece with Ryan Adams' 1979. more dylan/petty phrasing obv but still.

definitely some sonic similarities (also I believe Ryan was born in 1989...)

Ryan Adams 1984 album or his 1989 album of Taylor Swift covers? Ryan Adams has been locked into Darkness on the Edge of Town production sounds for at least three albums now. His self-titled is my personal favorite.

Ryan Adams' self-titled draws from similarly blatant touchstones. Bruce, Petty. War on Drugs throws in Dire Straits. .

(Who of course owe much to Springsteen and Dylan themselves.)

oh jeez 1989... i swear that was an actual typo lol

New song.
Somehow it sometimes feels like they just re-write the same song again and again

have a much greater appreciation of the war on drugs and what they do after listening to the new john mayer album

anyway, the closing guitar solo of the new song is very david gilmour (sounds like if "time" were in a major key)

new single is pretty good

It is, even if it kind of sounds like every other WoD song

On first listen I like the sound more than the song. Glad there's no click track - drums sound great. Chorus could be hookier, but excited to hear the album. They've been consistently excellent the last decade imo.

They're coming to a pretty bad venue in Belgium next year & tickets are like 40-60 euros - I know they're good live, but it's a no from me.

thanks for the update

Ordered this today: https://store.warnermusic.com/i-don-t-live-here-anymore-spotify-exclusive-vinyl.html

spotify exclusive vinyl ...?

ikr?

Turn back, you Oxy Moran!

thread is too dead, 13 days.

I like both of the new tracks but am more of a fan of them as a live band, so far

... I'm not impressed. Maybe it'll grow on me?

been 3 now. i like the new one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHcR2Jb3eH0

Singles were kinda misleading (except Change maybe)

It's a very good album.
poppier, with elements of Sophisti-Pop and New Wave that makes it sound different (at long last), in a good way

Good album, sounds like it was written during a long tour, away from family, in the rain, with John Waite's "Missing You" on repeat.

Good album, sounds like it was written during a long tour, away from family, in the rain, with John Waite's "Missing You" on repeat.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, October 29, 2021

Here comes the wave. Sob Rock was just the beginning!

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/29/entertainment/fetty-wap-arrested/index.html

FYI, this thread is on ILM and about the band

it can be both

Sorry, maybe that was in poor taste. Not trying to dunk on Fetty Wap btw

it can be both

― gman59, Friday, October 29, 2021

please no

No ones taking about the album ???

Ahhh changes > I don’t wanna

Into the great wide I don’t live here anymore open

why does it all sound like Mr. Mister

or Don Henley (or whatever slick 80s sound I'm thinking of)

Making Michelob Commercials to Make Music to Make Michelob Commercials To

lol

Album makes me feel like Im waiting for cold cuts at the supermarket deli

this is much more successful at the sound he's going for than the last few, there's real dynamics and drama instead of flattening any of that out into aimless ambience like he usually has been inclined to do.

I am hearing that this album is absolutely terrible and am afraid to listen to it

Nah, it's fine. More of the same, more or less.

I love @TheWarOnDrugs album and now I have so many more great songs for my War On Drugs + Dire Straits tribute act Narc Knopfler

— Jason IsBOO (@JasonIsbell) October 29, 2021

Shut up Jason Isbell

so it doesn't sound like bryan adams? because that was perpetua's take. note the only WoD album I have and have listened to was Lost in a Dream.

it more or less sounds like that. I don't think you would confuse it for any other band.

yeah it's not a huge departure or anything, just the songwriting's a bit more focused at the expense of the ambient noodling

i like the album. the last bit from "Old Skin" to "Occasional Rain" is everything I wanted from this new one.

could also be in a subcategory of new music that will eventually be played in CVS

as usual with me & them... I like the live versions better - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKJ5JyuP7WY

Robbie Bennett plays good piano & organ w Rosali (& "Crazy Horse," everybody agrees, actually David Nance Group): https://rosali.bandcamp.com/album/no-medium

xpost yeah this take on “I don’t live here anymore” grooves hard