The War on Drugs

Dreamy indie rock band The War on Drugs are characterised by misty melodies and rich, expansive soundscapes. New release A Deeper Understanding retains this hazy, velvet quality but is more nuanced than before, drawing on 80s influences whilst still managing to sound unique.

Late August feels like an appropriate release date: this album is euphoric – but it has a mournful quality, too, like summer slowly coming to an end. A Deeper Understanding is filled with veiled cracks and crevices to get lost in, but at the same time, it has direction; it meanders, but it knows where it’s going, held together by the propulsive, krautrock-style rhythm so vital to a War on Drugs record.

Opening track ‘Up All Night’ lifts the album off the ground with this same exultant energy: persistent drums, undulating guitar and choral backing vocals gradually build a landscape of melodic wonder. ‘Holding On’ and ‘Nothing to Find’ share this self-perpetuating vitality, whilst ‘Clean Living’ and ‘You Don’t Have To Go’ carve out quiet corners where we drift (rather than accelerate) through the melody.

Frontman Adam Granduciel’s reverb-drenched vocals have an even more Springsteen, Eric Carmen-esque tone than on previous records, which is especially pronounced on the intimate ‘Strangest Thing’ or ‘Knocked Down’. The lyrics, too, have a romantic 80s twinge: but Granduciel’s writing manages to be genuine without succumbing to cliché.

It is the music that we notice first, though. It’s not that Granduciel’s lyrics are indecipherable – as with the Cocteau Twins or My Bloody Valentine – but, like these bands, the War on Drugs share a similar sense of going beyond words, onto another plain of expression entirely. Their music communicates emotions for which words seem inadequate. A Deeper Understanding sounds like the best dream you have ever had has been born, and its mother is sunshine. It is endlessly exciting; it sounds immortal.

‘Am I just living in the space between/ The beauty and the pain?/ And the real thing’ Granduciel wonders, on ‘Strangest Thing’. A Deeper Understanding does, indeed, feel liminal. It hangs by a beautiful, shiny thread, searching for something indescribable ‘in the space between’ one thing and another.