The War on Drugs’ Strangest Thing Is a Wistful, Excellent Summer Jam – SPIN

A Deeper Understanding,the fourth album from Phillys beloved War on Drugs, arrives August 25. The timing is perfect.This is when summer begins its slowdissolve. Youve still got a solid month of beach weather left, but youre already preoccupied with everything you have or havent managed to do in the days that are already used up. You convince yourself that youre actually going tomissthe humidity and grit of the season, and the air takes on a glow thats all the more appealingfor the knowledge that it will expire soon. This kind of nostalgia for the present is the War on Drugs specialty, and on the secondDeeper Understandingsingle Strangest Thing, theyre serving it up in fine form.

The band has spent almost a decade refining its formula, and from the sound of the two singles weve heard, the new album makes no attempt at a total overhaul.Tunnel of Love- and Streets of Philadelphia-era Bruce Springsteen, a little Tom Petty, Harmonia and other bands exploring the softer side of krautrock, the entire production canon of Daniel Lanois. (The hyperreal Americana offered onOh MercyandTime Out of Mind,Lanoiss two albums for Bob Dylan, feels especially prescient here.) On past albums, the War on Drugs had a tendencywhich you may haveloved or hated, depending on your dispositiontoblanket these influences with the sonic equivalent of an Instagram filter, flattening theircontrasts in the service of the aforementioned wistful feeling.

Strangest Thing dropsthe haze and just goes for it. Ive been hiding out so long, Ive gotta find another way, bandleader AdamGranduciel sings at the opening, over a inauspiciousarrangement heavy on reverb and electric piano. Patiently, the songgathers force with every line: a flanged guitar fill here, synth strings there, some choral-sounding backing vocals, then a pair of brief and magnificent guitar solos, arriving with a snare drum like a starter pistol and a whammy bar wiggle that may make certain listeners weak in the knees. In spirit more than sound, the finished product also also evokes the specter of Spector, perhaps the first studio tinkerer to dream that something so base as rocknroll could dare to reach for transcendence. Strangest Thing is nearly seven minutes long. By the time its over, like the summer, it feels like its hardly begun. Fortunately, in this case, you can always rewind and start again.

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The War on Drugs' Strangest Thing Is a Wistful, Excellent Summer Jam - SPIN