The War on Drugs – I Don’t Live Here Anymore: Album Review

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The War on Drugs is a human failure of the greatest kind. The band though, led by Adam Granduciel play Americana as vast as the land it comes from. The land is where the spirit resides that shapes the people who inhabit Middle North America. There is a musical tradition which stretches from the Carter Family to Woody Guthrie. Dylan through to Springsteen. There’s written history and there’s oral and musical history.

Living Proof is the opening chapter. A melancholy piano with a strummed acoustic guitar. This is a descent into Americana, not a rising. The same resignation which opens Springsteen’s Racing in the Streets. The feeling that where you grew up may just as well have never existed. Maybe I’ve been gone too long/ I can’t go back.

An electric guitar lifts the mood with spare single notes. But I’m rising/ And I’m damaged/ Love overflowing. The band is here to enact a resurrection of soul and spirit. The singer is a little fragile and not convinced himself.

Harmonia’s Dream. A bigger stadium sound. Metronome drums and a commanding bass. A meshed wave of melodic sound forms the canvas. Tom Petty in vocal style as the inspiration rises. Indie Pop and a production which delivers the shine of a brand-new car as it motorvates across the Badlands. Sound as texture. In a vision/ You’re a ghost in black and white/ A silhouette in blue and green.

The War on Drugs

A connection is made to Robert Johnson and blues falling down like rain. Who took a Greyhound bus to drive the Blues away. Halfway through and the keyboards take it through to Eighties Dance Club music.

Change. Running from the white light/ To try to get to you. If you’re running from the white lights then you’re caught in the Cross Road Blues. The band has the chiming guitar sound of REM mixed with a little Springsteen. The resulting musical canvas is an attempt at that seamless sound of the first two Byrd’s albums.

I Don’t Wanna Wait has quirky electronic rhythms and a Seventies Soul voice. An Ernie Isley-style guitar break nails it. The Isley Brothers did do a version of the good time hippy vibe hit Summer Breeze.

Keep heading down South with Victim. Soul with a bit of the Stax spark from the drums. Sparkles and shines with soulful melodic bolts firing off. The vocals recall the Country Soul of Delbert McClinton.

The title track I Don’t Live Here Anymore. A Byrds/REM hybrid in sound as they perfect Drone Folk into melodic Pop. Nailed in place by Indie-Pop band Lucius who provide nice counterpoint harmony vocals.

I guess my memories run wild/ Like when we went to see Bob Dylan/ We danced to Desolation Row. At the band’s genesis, with long-departed Kurt Vile and still-present bass anchor David Hartley, they were guys obsessed with the old feller Jack Frost. He is many things and contains multitudes.

This is best heard on Rings Around My Father’s Eyes. Granduciel’s phrasing is straight out of Blonde On Blonde. There is rain and storms. Oceans and darkness. He’s not sure whether he’s drowning or flying. The rain washes to salvation.

Similar themes on Old Skin. Begins in a contemplative resigned mood borrowed from Springsteen’s Nebraska album. To follow my father’s dream then watch it fade away/ Wrapped up in tired skin peeling away. Something is stirring in the heart of America. Inspiration floods in with the keyboards and a harmonica chimes in. Transforms into a an anthemic Folk Rocker.

Let’s lift the depression, the curse. Occasional Rain. Ringing guitars for us to hop on and ride out. I got swept up in a world so strange/ One you’d never even recognise/ Feel the storm coming on/ Feel the darkness at your gate/ Live the loneliness of life.

Turns into inspirational Pop by alchemy. They mirror Creedence Clearwater Revival who also sang of bad moon’s rising and Who’ll Stop the Rain. At the similar time in America when anger and social upheaval boiled over.

The War on Drugs raised the flag as a great American band with their acclaimed Lost in the Dream album. They’re running with that flag on I Don’t Live Here Anymore.

Rev Orange Peel           

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