The major label debut from The War On Drugs is a full bodied and healthy dose of nostalgia and longing that is usually reserved for country singers. The Philadelphia quintet, led by guitarist/vocalist Adam Granduciel, sounds more at home playing in a small bar surrounded by pasture and rolling hills than the city that Rocky built. Yet, like Rocky, the music speaks to a decidedly American idea. Wagonwheel Blues sprawls and captures the essence of simpler times and the readiness to embrace the natural wonder found therein. Opener “Arms Like Boulders” signifies the weight this album carries throughout. Guitars and harmonicas whirl as Granduciel acts the part of storyteller and offers up Springsteen-like narratives with exuberance. Tracks like “Taking the Farm” and “There is No Urgency” sound like Bob Dylan or Townes Van Zandt with shoe-gazer undertones. In fact, much of the instrumentation is filtered through harmonic effects and empty space to achieve the distant and faraway effect of the album. To say this is American music is to say that American music is lost upon the highway, lonesome and cold. “Show Me the Coast” is especially epic, as a driving riff exhaustively layered over itself becomes a ten-minute crescendo. This leads directly into the closer “Barrel of Batteries.” The blues guitar comes clean for the first time, a snake recently shed, as if The War On Drugs can finally lift the weight of American music off their collective shoulders.
– Charlie Swanson
The War On Drugs: www.thewarondrugs.net
Secretly Canadian: www.secretlycanadian.com