The War on Drugs | How Did Heartland Rock Become a Dreamscape?

Um, so you know, whatever.

I mean, it's probably my favorite album of all time, so I mean, it really does seem to be

Sometimes you'll hear a new band and immediately start recognizing the ghosts.

Mm.

There's a little Springsteen, perhaps some Dylan, the widescreen guitars of Dire Straits, the endless road of American rock.

Mm.

But somewhere underneath, it's all there, something else.

Repetition, synthesizers, drum machines, drones, and the hypnotic momentum of German experimental music.

Mm.

This is the strange world of War on Drugs.

Mm.

Their songs can feel enormous and intimate at the same time.

Guitars stretch towards the horizon.

Mm.

Drums keep moving re- relentlessly forward.

Mm.

And Adam Granduciel's voice seems to arrive from somewhere in the middle distance.

Yeah.

It's music that frequently sounds as though it's traveling.

Mm.

And perhaps that's why comparisons never quite explain them, because while War on Drugs draws openly on the past, they don't really sound like a revival band.

No.

They've taken the vocabulary of classic American rock and placed it inside something much more atmospheric-

Mm

... repetitive, and strangely dreamlike.

Yeah.

So how do they do it? How did a band surrounded by familiar influences create a sound that became so unmistakably their own?

Yeah.

How indeed? [laughs]

And this is the strange thing.

I'm, I'm here with Dr. Andrew Weber.

Hi there.

We're going to be, uh, discussing the War on Drugs.

Yep.