The War on Drugs
Lost in the Dream
(Secretly Canadian)
⋆⋆⋆
Much like his fellow Philadelphia musician and sometime collaborator Kurt Vile, Adam Granduciel makes a music that is unmistakably Americana. His third album with his band The War on Drugs is a mind-expanding take on the classic heartland rock of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty; psychedelic blue-collar anthems. Granduciel’s drawl has a distinct Dylan ring to it, and tracks such as Red Eyes have layered acoustic guitars, blazing leads and rousing gusts of sax. The punchy concision of radio rock, though, isn’t really his thing: tracks such as Under the Pressure sprawl out to eight minutes, powered by pounding motorik rhythms that fix their gaze on some distant horizon. Slick synth sounds occasionally distract, a production affectation that perhaps should have been left in the 1980s. All the same, Lost in the Dream doesn’t feel overly sanitised. Still, there’s a heartache that gels nicely with extended arrangements: see the wounded, romantic Disappearing, or An Ocean in Between the Waves, Granduciel singing of “a black sunrise” like a man who fears the light may never return.
[ artslife@thenational.ae ]
