Dispatches from The War on Drugs — a Philly rock band on the verge
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Adam Granduciel is runnin' down a dream.
Adam Granduciel is happy to be here.
Not here, literally, because literally he’s sitting in a weather-beaten aluminum chair behind his house in Fishtown. And he’s being interviewed. Again. For maybe the thousandth time in the past few months. A couple weeks ago, he was in Berlin and Paris, answering questions via a translator for European rock critics.
The topic then, as now, is his rock band, The War on Drugs, and Lost in the Dream, which will be released by Secretly Canadian Records on Tuesday; it’s their newest and finest record to date.
With winter finally on the run, he figured his neglected backyard would be a decent place to drink coffee, eat a tofu hoagie and talk.
But the scent of defrosting dog poop occasionally flutters in on the wind. The Market-Frankford El — up high and moving at top speed — comes barreling by every so often. Once in a while, something loud and industrial roars nearby but never shows itself. It quiets the birds and threatens to drown out exactly why Granduciel is saying he feels so unexpectedly, unsettlingly pleased.
“I’m blessed beyond belief that music has become my career. I didn’t expect it,” he says. “I didn’t necessarily ever play to a sold-out New York show and stand up there and be, like, ‘Yeah, man, I fucking made it! This is what I always wanted!’ You know?”
But that’s not the only reason.
He’s assembled what he considers the finest group of musicians a frontman can hope for, the kind of bandmates he trusts to turn his homespun rock songs into polished anthems on a nightly basis. War on Drugs’ current lineup includes David Hartley on bass, Robbie Bennett on keys and Charlie Hall on drums. For their upcoming tour behind Lost in the Dream, they’ll be joined by Jon Natchez on saxophone and Anthony Lamarca on more keyboards and guitar.
But it’s not just that; it’s that these guys put up with a grueling and often endless-seeming recording obstacle course. Not marathon sessions — just re-dubs after re-dubs and hours in one studio, then another.
Granduciel says he’s not so much driven as searching. Songs have a “beautiful potential that I’m trying to unlock,” he says. And he’s perfectly willing to lay down miles of virtual tape in the name of unlocking it — only to scrap it all and start over. Somehow his mates in the War on Drugs are OK with it. Somehow he found a producer in Jeff Zeigler who sees things the way he does.
But it’s not just that. It’s also that despite the long, strange recording process, or because of it, War on Drugs has finally, kinda, sorta made the record Granduciel’s been dreaming of: lush, atmospheric, classic-sounding, moody, uplifting, mysterious. Despite its laborious origins, it sounds smooth and effortless. Early reviews for Lost in the Dream mostly have been fawning, and he’s noticed the band’s appeal and audience seems to be widening and deepening.
But it’s not just that, either. It’s that this record was, for a while, the one thing he was pinning his hopes on, the thing that may or may not have plunged him into despair and then, apparently, pulled him out of it.
“I always wanted to be an artist when I was a kid. I was super into drawing and painting,” says Granduciel. “But … I didn’t want to learn form first. I wasn’t good enough to master form. So when I was painting, I was painting these modern figurative abstract things, but I didn’t know enough to really execute.”
Sculpting would be a bad idea for a guy like him, too: “I’d probably end up with, like, a pebble.”
Music, however is a good fit for an artist who likes to explore a song’s near-infinite possibilities. “You’re never really losing anything, because with modern recording you can always ‘save as.’ You can make big decisions. You can re-record the drums. You can always say, ‘Well, let’s fly those drums in from that other take. Let’s go back to that other take.’ I like being able to do that. To see it like a painting, in some weird way, or a sculpture or something, and just try to keep chipping away at it — but there’s a comfort in not having to be 100 percent married to your idea.”
The songs on Lost in the Dream — from the exhilaratingly righteous rocker “Red Eyes” to the moody, mesmerizing “Suffering” — were built this way. Many of them ease in and burn out in a droney, moody haze of guitar. Underneath most of them are the demos he recorded in his living room — built up, stripped down and built up again, imagined and re-imagined until they were not so much perfect as they were completely and thoroughly done.
“I guess they ended up where I was hoping they could end up,” says Granduciel. He insists he’s not a perfectionist. “I just want to see them evolve, and I want to see them be as awesome as they could be.
“I just really love the process of recording,” he says. “I like seeing it evolve into something that I didn’t expect. I don’t necessarily have an overall vision for the way the songs should sound. I’m not, like, chasing a sound. I’m chasing the magic of each song.”
Ever the painter who eschewed form in favor of wild detours and happy accidents, Granduciel is as helplessly mysterious in the way he talks about his music as he is when he writes his lyrics. “An Ocean in Between the Waves” is classic War on Drugs, full of gorgeous lines that set vague scenes:
Just want to lie in the moonlight
and see the light shine in
see you in the outline
it never gets too dark to find
anybody at anytime.
This band’s classic-rock underpinnings — riffs and rhythms a la Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, swing and swagger via Sonic Youth and Dire Straits — are undeniable. But Lost in the Dream also draws unexpected power from its smoky ambiguity.
All of which is to say you can love these songs for their emotional truth even as you scratch your head over their meanings. “I’m not really a story writer, in the way that I can take one idea and write a narrative … like, ‘Jack and Diane’ or something. Awful example. But that kind of idea,” says Granduciel. “My end of the bargain is to not pretend that they’re not coming from a real place.”
Lost in the Dream’s real place was — well, it’s doubtful that Granduciel would use the term “existential crisis,” but that sounds pretty close to where his mind was before and during the making of these songs.
Once all the touring behind 2011’s Slave Ambient was over, War on Drugs returned home and Granduciel found himself going through some things. A long-term relationship had just ended, and he spent a lot of time alone. He began overthinking everything in his life, from friendships to family to music. He drew inward and grew anxious. Old feelings of inadequacy bubbled to the surface.
“I did start feeling a lot more disconnected with myself, with my purpose in life, my future, my ability to communicate with people close to me. All these things that I think are questions everybody has in their life or deals with,” he says.
It showed up first in his songwriting. He started working on tracks like “Suffering” and “Under the Pressure” before things got really bad and he found them exacerbating his issues. The record, though often uplifting and exhilarating, really owes its existence to this dark period in his life. But damn if he isn’t tired of talking about it.
Basically, it stems from feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. Granduciel’s not one of those guys who grew up with music all around him, back home in Dover, Mass. (It’s only when he says “Bahston” that you detect his accent.) His mom had some Roy Orbison tapes in the car, but most of the time if there was music in the house it was from him and his guitar. He didn’t think he was anything special, musically.
When he moved to Philly 10 years ago, he never imagined he’d be one of the lucky few who could make a living as a musician. “I just didn’t even think that that was a possibility. … I just thought, oh, I’m this hobbyist guy,” he says. “I think that’s what the album is about. It’s about finding comfort in trying to be the best you can in all things, you know? Music or relationships or whatever. Being a good boyfriend or being a good friend.”
Part of it is pushing himself.
“I don’t think I’ve taken a deep breath or anything,” he says. “There was this thing where I kept saying, over the course of last year, … ‘I’m just feeling really nervous and anxious and depressed because I gotta be in the studio next week. So after next week, after we get the basics down, I’ll come back.’
“Or: ‘I’m just an absolute total disaster because I’m mixing the record. And this’ll be the final thing [that makes me anxious]. And we finished mixing and, still, I couldn’t sleep. And then it’s, like, ‘Oh well, I still gotta master it.’ And then it’s, like, ‘Oh well, it comes out in March, maybe in March I’ll feel better.’ So. It’ll come out soon, but after it’s out it’ll be this tour, you know. It’s a never-ending loop.”
Maybe he’s not a deep-breath kind of guy.
“Yeah,” he half-laughs, half-sighs. “That’s a whole other thing.”
Right now, Granduciel says his mind is in a better place. He drops a “my therapist says” reference here and there, and with each good thing he hears or reads about the record he allows himself if not straight-up happiness, then at least a little bit of relief at being understood.
The War on Drugs feels like it’s on the verge of something with this record. It’s close to the feeling you got about Kurt Vile last year — the sense that, on the heels of a great record, things are starting to fall into place. Vile and Granduciel are still BFFs. They used to play in each other’s bands and while they’re not often in the same city at the same time, they’re always texting.
Vile’s become an expert at the pretend-superstar thing — the mural, the official award from the city, etc. Granduciel’s not really dreaming of those things, at least not yet.
Right now, he’s more excited about the record and the tour. The War on Drugs just got booked to play the Roots Picnic on May 31, a high honor in their hometown — and they’re going to fly in from a show in Barcelona that afternoon, just in time to grab their gear and play the main stage.
“Are we on the verge of something? I don’t know. Definitely the music’s getting to more people. And I’m fascinated by the different kinds of people that are getting into it, even if it’s just one song they hear,” he says. “It’s nice to keep making steps upward in terms of feeling like you’re contributing to the conversation.
“I do feel like I’m trying to put good music out there, and honest music and uplifting music and...” he lets the thought trail off. “That should be enough. It’s life, you know. Try to make whatever mark you can anywhere.”
The War on Drugs plays Tue., March 18, 8 p.m., $18, with White Laces and A.M. Mills, Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St., 215-232-2100, utphilly.com.
