Peter Holslin wrote this on PCP
Depending on whom you ask, The War on Drugs are either a mashup of Tunnel of Love-era Bruce Springsteen and Disintegration-era The Cure, a dad-rock version of Spacemen 3, a peyote vision quest featuring Tom Petty, or the inventors of a new genre called “Bossgaze.” But this Philly outfit is much more than the sum of its comparisons. Adam Granduciel, the War on Drugs’ front man, poured his life into the band’s outstanding new album Lost in the Dream. What came out of his delirious mixing sessions is a fresh, positively original piece of rootsy American rock.
The term “roots” implies a certain honesty and connectedness, and between Mumford & Sons’ interminable mandolin runs and the bizarrely anachronistic video for Avicii and Aloe Blacc’s hit “Wake Me Up,” you won’t find a whole lot of that in the trendy corn pone pop of today. However, The War on Drugs is the real thing. Building on the blue-collar approach of dudes like Rod Stewart and John Cougar Mellencamp (and, yeah, of course, Bob Dylan), Granduciel elevates classic themes of rebellion and struggle to a higher level, using free-flowing guitar solos, synth/organ layers, and the ever-persistent chug of an all-American 4/4 rock beat to play on a cosmic tension between intensity, calm, stability and movement.
On Lost in the Dream, Granduciel gazes deep into himself, singing not just about love but also his place in the world—what he wants to do and where he wants to be. That means constantly pressing forward, exploring the backroads and cold winds of the “dream” from the album’s title. But for all of the wonder it brings, it also means his hold on the one he loves—and his own stability—is tenuous at best. “I’m at the darkened hillside / and there’s a haze right between the trees / and I can barely see you,” he sings in “An Ocean in Between the Waves,” a seven-minute rocker that finds him taking off on a runaway beat, letting loose with one guitar solo after another, amidst a flow of organs, synths, Rhodes and more multi-tracked guitars I can count.
The War on Drugs has always been a dreamy band. Their debut album, 2008’s Wagonwheel Blues, is flush with so many layers of plucked guitar and humming organ that it’s almost dizzying. Their second album, 2011’s Slave Ambient, is a bit cleaner, its lush loops providing the ideal soundtrack to a long drive up the California coast. It’s all mesmerizing, beautiful stuff, but I can see why Granduciel might feel conflicted about his ramblin’ ways. Both Slave Ambient and Lost in the Dream spark dangerous levels of leisure. The instrumental cut “The Haunting Idle” off of Dream drifts on by. It reminds me of when I graduated from college and spent a year kicking back and living aimlessly, before finally realizing with horror how much time had passed.
From song structure to arrangement, everything about Lost in the Dream feels like it’s guided by wanderlust. On closing track “In Reverse” you can even hear somebody strumming an acoustic guitar way off in the background, as though he’s playing his own tune while this one unfolds. Eventually a beat kicks in to guide the way through to the end. The War on Drugs’ trusty, no-nonsense rhythms strike me as the key to what they’re doing. The beat keeps the band tethered to the earth, providing fuel to the endless dream.
