The War On Drugs – I Don't Live Here Anymore
Has Adam Granduciel finally painted his masterpiece? The War On Drugs' fifth studio album is another triumph, and the band's greatest and grandest statement yet
America’s greatest rock band. It’s a loaded sentence, isn’t it? It’s also a daft one. To put rock‘n’roll in a glass case is to kill it. And isn’t rock dead anyway? Whatever. The War On Drugs new album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, is their greatest and grandest statement yet. Adam Granduciel’s obsessive nature when it comes to making records has paid off as the Grammy winners' fifth studio album is another triumph in sound.
You can hear the hard miles he’s travelled in the glorious technicolour coda of Change, a song purring with perpetual motion that will leave you breathless. By now, you should know the production puts Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers in the room with motorik drum machines and Bruce Springsteen’s synth collection, but the revelation found within the dense grooves and meandering melodies of I Don’t Live Here Anymore is that the songs now match the superior sounds.
The Dylan-esque strum of Living Proof, Victim’s stinging riffs, Rings Around My Father’s Eyes grandeur and the wild mainstream swim in the unexpected winterlude sun of Occasional Rain will all live long in the memory. 'Don’t let them stone you when the comedown starts', sings Granduciel in the latter, safe in the knowledge that when it comes to The War On Drugs, his comedown remains in the rearview mirror.
Listen to: Living Proof, Change, Occasional Rain