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a r t i s t :: The War On Drugs
t i t l e :: A Deeper Understanding
d a t e :: 2017-00-00
l a b e l :: Atlantic
c a t n r :: 7567866063
g e n r e :: Indie
s o u r c e :: CD
b i t r a t e :: 250 kbps avg
e n c o d e r :: LAME 3.98.4 -V 0
t r a c k s :: 10
p l a y t i m e :: 66:13
s i z e :: 119.7MB
tracklist
1 Up All Night 6:23
2 Pain 5:30
3 Holding On 5:50
4 Strangest Thing 6:41
5 Knocked Down 3:59
6 Nothing To Find 6:10
7 Thinking Of A Place 11:10
8 In Chains 7:20
9 Clean Living 6:28
10 You Dont't Have To Go 6:42
releasenotes
In his early songs, Bruce Springsteen wrote about machines. Cars were always
there to the point of clichΘ, but he also wrote about howling factories and
creaky amusement park rides and record players and undefined contraptions
filled with flame that waited for you ominously on the edge of town. His
interest is easy to understand. Machines take you places and inflict things
upon you, and machines also rust and break down and remind you that time is
passing and death is always near.
The singer and songwriter Adam Granduciel, who leads the War on Drugs and who
is often compared to Springsteen, arrives at similar terrain from another
angle. If so many of SpringsteenÆs songs were about machines, War on DrugsÆ
music is a machine. GranducielÆs work finds its meaning in the totality of its
sound, in how writing and arranging and perfecting every detail in the studio
is part of building music that carries you with it. His way of understanding
the world is to use that sound machine to excavate and explore his interior
life and hopefully shape it into something listeners might understand, even
when heÆs not entirely sure where heÆs going.
True to the projectÆs nature, the War on DrugsÆ albums arenÆt reinventions,
theyÆre more like a new model in an established lineùa Mark IV that adds a few
features and continually refines the engineering. On A Deeper Understanding,
his first album for Atlantic, the synths get an extra twinkle, the bass-led
builds get another octave of rumble, and some songs have a dozen instruments
on them where they once might have had seven or eight. ôHolding Onö is packed
with piano and celeste and a chugging acoustic, but the entire song is wrapped
around the heavenly slide guitar from Meg Duffy, which uncurls like a plume of
smoke and steals the song like a Robert Fripp solo. The arrangements
throughout are mind-boggling, and if Granduciel leans slightly away from the
explosive anthems punctuated by an echoing ôWhooo!ö that made Lost in the
Dream so special, the extra attention to craft makes up for it.
A Deeper Understanding is also a fascinating study in influence; itÆs hard to
think of a band with more obvious touchstones that also sounds so original.
Over his last two records, Granduciel has chosen a very particular slice of
music historyùmid-Æ80s rock made by baby boomers with synthesizersùrepossessed
it, and built a new world within it. Like the music from that era, A Deeper
Understanding is all about contrast, the push and pull of rock grittiness and
authenticity, while the layers of keyboards and studio sheen give the music a
dreamier quality, suggesting the kind of imaginary spaces dreamed up by
future-obsessed ravers. ThereÆs a thread of GranducielÆs music that extends
from something like Talk TalkÆs öI DonÆt Believe in Youô from their 1986 album
The Colour of Spring and winds through later incarnations of sun-kissed guitar
pop, or even producer M. VogelÆs opulent edit of SpringsteenÆs ôTougher Than
the Rest.ö
So yes, Springsteen, Dylan, Tom Petty, and Neil Young all made songs between
1983 and 1988 that sounded something like the War on Drugs, but they often had
these booming gated drums, a technique Granduciel mostly avoids. Instead, he
favors a steady, muted pulse evocative of krautrockÆs motorik groove. The
arrangement of ôIn Chainsö hums and explodes but the drums plow ahead with
barely a fill or an accent, precisely marking the passing time. The approach
to rhythm highlights the glide of the arrangement, creating a long rope of
sound bound together so tightly it could never be pulled apart.
Springsteen had his E Street Band, Petty had his Heartbreakers, and Young had
Crazy Horse. But A Deeper Understanding isnÆt a ôbandö record in the same way.
ItÆs very much the product of GranducielÆs obsessive vision. He plays roughly
half the instruments on the album, in addition to producing and engineering
it. Beneath the lush surface, songs focus on loneliness, alienation, private
suffering, and the rare moments when you can leave that all behind. The
intricate production and subject matter lend a feeling of hermeticism; the
album is a place you hide inside, not a tool for exploring the world.
Granduciel doesnÆt create fully-drawn characters (other people are phantoms or
wishes or memories in his lyrics) but thereÆs always a desire for connection,
and he lets in just enough light to make it seem possible. The albumÆs first
single was the epic 11-minute travelogue ôThinking of a Place,ö with a glowing
synth swell reminiscent of Manuel G÷ttschingÆs E2-E4 and a patient tempo that
suggests a slow walk through the woods in the dark, the kind where you keep
your hands out in front of you, feeling for branches. It turned out to be an
appropriate introduction to this record because ôthinking of a
placeöùsomewhere where you can lose yourself, get out of your own head,
somewhere elseùis what the whole record is ultimately about. A different
songwriterùsomeone like Neil Young, sayùmight sketch out what this place looks
like, tell us about who we might find there. But Granduciel canÆt, or doesnÆt
want to. And that lack of articulation, that inability to identify the source
of pain and the path to redemption, becomes another of the recordÆs themes.
But all that happens beneath the surface, almost subliminally; itÆs the
impossible sweep and grandeur of the music that tells the real story, of how a
rush of sound can take us somewhere we canÆt explain.
www.thewarondrugs.net
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The_War_On_Drugs-A_Deeper_Understanding-(7567866063)-CD-2017-k4