With a sound that makes you simply want to pack your bags, grab your sweetheart and hit the road in your beat-up old car, destination unknown, The War On Drugs drop by NBI to give those of us who haven’t done that in quite some time the chance to feel what it feels like.
If Kurt Vile’s Smoke Ring For My Halo has been doing the rounds on your turntable all summer long then The War On Drugs new album Slave Ambient is for you. In fact you would be forgiven for mistaking one of these bands for the other, their vocal styles cut of the same americana drawl, the band chuggin’ along in the background like a runaway train. Having helped form The War On Drugs with Adam Granduciel back in 2005, Vile has since moved on but at no cost to their sound, tellingly Granduciel is still part of Vile’s touring band…why be in one of the best bands around when you can be in two right? Lucky us.
It’s the spirit of Bruce Springsteen in musical form. Putting rhetoric aside for a moment, this is what record label Secretly Canadian have to say:
Sure, The War on Drugs’ music overflows with echoes and strains of the songs and sounds we’ve all loved, yet it always feels singular and seamless, a perfect and pure distillation of influences into something that sounds like nothing else. Every song on Slave Ambient is instantly identifiable and infinitely intricate, a latticework of ideas and energies building into mile-high rock anthems.
It’s Springsteen and My Bloody Valentine spaceyness combined into one beautiful sprawling sound like this next one Come To The City, while below is a recent live recording of Comin’ Through off last autumn’s Future Weather EP.
So, road trip?
