War on Drugs

~lost in the dream~

cultural relevance is p overrated

i do like how this album makes me remember the 80s that don't seem to get remembered as much, not new order's 80s or the cure's 80s or afrika bambaataa's 80s or duran duran's 80s, but the 80s of terrible jeans and weird sweaters and bruce hornsby and late period steve winwood albums and pink floyd bedroom posters and eddie and the cruisers and those fake bands that played at party scenes in r-rated cable comedies etc

all that stuff, at least for me growing up near a farm town, was really the 80s as i experienced it..the other stuff seemed like little exotic things that you could maybe see a passing reference to in a hip gas-station purchased rolling stone in the front of the book

^^^ summer of 89

i welcome this millennium's glut of "nu" 80s band. viva la 80s.

white dudes with moustaches in fedoras playing saxophone

i saw some weird old tribute to soul thing on PBS the other night, billy preston was the bandleader, must've been 87 or 88, the whole band besides billy was these jobber white dudes with moustaches and fedoras and the bassist was some dude dressed up like a "punk rocker" from a police academy movie or someone who escaped from sigue sigue sputnik, they would have a bunch of classic soul dudes come out and do their one big song for a bunch of white ppl dressed for a fancy ball....percy sledge came out and killed it on "when a man loves a woman" and had on a tuxedo and a perfect Soul Glo afro that really shined in the lights, then sam (I think it was sam maybe it was dave) came out and did a song and pulled up some woman in a really terrible dress and they sexy danced really awkardly, it's like now THAT's the 80s i remember sorry interpol

ahh yeah the late'80s for me involved listening to too much "roll with it" era winwood

the '80s music I remember around chicago was like one long coda/homage to the blues brothers' "everybody needs somebody"

lots of the melodies on this remind me of "Highway 29" by off ghost of tom joad, esp some of the changes/vox in eyes to the wind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db8uxbYC5uU&feature=kp

xp -- basically, the eighties that led up to and includes Road House, and yet said movie transcends.

i feel like sam elliot could ride off into the sunset to one of the long outros on this album

Am I the only one who thinks about Spoon while listening to this record?

They kinda do to Springsteen what Spoon did to Billy Joel..

i think thee oh sees on major downers. there's even some distorted reverby john dwyer "woop!"s going on

kinda weird how this band name wasn't already taken when you think about it

Yeah it's a good name

It's a great name and when you google it you might learn something, too!

Amazing how they surpass Kurt Vile now.
They set the bar higher for his/their next record.

I alwats think about those two acts together..

Are they still friends?

Whenever I see the name my mind first goes to the Barenaked Ladies song of the same name, as opposed to the actual War on Drugs.

the first line in the AllMusic review does not persuade me to listen to this one (I heard the debut in '09, liked some, trashed it).

cmon alfred

soul search with us

generation next

if you can groove to the ache and poignance of "tunnel of love" you might appreciate this one

dunno if I can "do" poignance.

puff tuff alfred

smoke through brother

Just got my copy brb soul searching

i find that this album sounds a lot like kurt vile's stuff. the songs are pretty long, quite melodic in a sunny sort of way and there is a lot of repetition which in this case i like as it engraves the music slowly in my mind. like kurt vile there is definitely a kind of hypnotic flair to this. the computer drums suck big time, but that has been mentioned upthread. the singer by the way has a voice not too different from kurt vile's, it's not a great singing voice but the music is definitely not about singing. somehow this reminds me more of bruce hornsby than bruce springsteen, but even in the early 90s i tended to confuse those two.

Did I really hear an adult with a frontal lobe sing "Lost in the dream/just a silence of a moment/It's always hard to tell" and proceed to get tangled in harmonicas and echo-y guitars? He also sings "As I struggle with myself right now/As I let the darkness in" or some such thing in the next song, swathed in more echo. I don't hear Dylan or Petty or whoever in this crap -- I hear wooly-headed nonsense, sung by a guy who thinks he's R&H-era Bono fronting Wild Nothing.

Lyrics don't really matter w this IMO

I don't get the bono thing at all

why wasn't this new album on a new thread? anyways diving in right now. first song reminds me of Destroyer vocally and now playing the second song and this is Arcade Fire, almost to a T. this is going to be fun.

not everything needs a fucking new thread

true but i think bigger things should have it's own thread. i'm liking "Suffering" best so far.

fucking love this album

Um. I agree. This deserves its own thread.

Came to say the exact same thing Mordy said.

i think i love this too

i have never listened to this band before (didn't even know the kurt vile connection until this week), but i am really enjoying this album!

There you go, now it's an all-purpose War On Drugs thread.

Lyrics don't really matter w this IMO

except when I hear them clearly

better cover art:

http://i.imgur.com/eDwMF.jpg

What chu talkin' 'bout, Alfred?

V rockist Albert for shame
But seriously I can't really see lyrics being even your fifth takeaway from this

i'm hearing more of a funk about the gooch's latest recess abuse in this

I didn't even realize this album even had lyrics until Alfred pointed them out.

those strummy gooey guitars do the talking first

this record put me in a pretty extreme state of bliss last night. i'm always pleased when ilm jumps on this sort of thing rather than deriding it (kaputt being the recent parallel in this regard i guess, but this is even deeper in my wheelhouse than kaputt was)

I like it a lot, but I've given up on it being the next Kaputt. Kaputt sounded impersonal, like something created by a group without central guidance. This never stops sounding like the thought-process of one man. It stays 'authentic' that way, which bores me a bit.

i listened to this on a walk today, on my headphones, it was soooo much boomier and '80s'. i like teh home system sound better.

this isnt as good a record as kaputt

it isn't and it doesn't sound "eighties" to me: it's more redolent of late 2000s echo-laden mush like AnCo.

Hey now people. I've been on board with these guys since Wagonwheel Blues. Loved Slave Ambient too. I heard the first half of the new one today and I cannot remember hating a record so much on first listen. All gauzy atmosphere, no songs.