Even in the band's early days, War on Drugs' music could change the dimensions of a room. They achieved this feat not just through sheer volume (although songs like “Show Me The Coast” or “It's Your Destiny” could reach terrifying decibel levels) but through range: huge emotions peeking through the curtain of glowing synths and droning guitar. They made hanging out in a grimy rock club watching four noisy Philly dudes conjure up colorful grime like standing on the edge of a cliff with the universe roaring in your ears that you're smaller than you think you are. When the War on Drugs evolved into a six to bring Lost in the dreamIts diverse haze across the stage, their sound crammed into the rafters of thousand-cap venues, fully realizing the kind of vastness that music writers love to call “stadium size.”
LIVE DRUGSthe band's first live album, collected recordings from 2014 to 2019, focusing on cuts from Lost in the dream and A deeper understanding. Four years later, they are back together DRUGS ALIVE AGAINsupply comes from their 2022 and 2023 releases. Like its predecessor, DRUGS ALIVE AGAIN it feels like a one-off show, one where you lucked into the perfect spot in front of the soundboard, wowed by a band that exudes the ineffable combination of tour-tight and casual. DRUGS ALIVE AGAIN is an expansion in many ways: The band added multi-instrumentalist Eliza Hardy Jones in 2022, and the set draws heavily from 2021's sparkling prairiecore project I don't live here anymore. It's assembled even more carefully—Granduciel stitched this version of “Under the Pressure,” for example, out of six different performances. Here, the music doesn't blend into a beautiful mass like the sound of War on Drugs of ore. Instead, it is built into a towering, complex structure.
This new, seven-piece formation of War on Drugs plays with remarkable patience. There's a new—or at least newly emphasized—attention to interlocking rhythms that reinforce the Heartland core of the songs. Granduciel's solos aren't as muddled as in the past, trading the minute-long track sessions for a more measured take on hypnotic maximalism. The band assembles “Living Proof” brick by brick, starting with sixteenth-note guitar strums, then adding eighth-note hi-hats, syncopated bass drums, and that delicious keyboard line that floats in a haze of reverb. It's almost techno-like in construction, meticulously building tension and ending in a quietly cathartic payoff when the groove shifts into its roots-rock coda. During certain songs, you can pick out one element—the dusty Linn Drum backbone of “Burning,” Dave Hartley's motorcycle during “Slow Ghost”—and follow it like a single stream in a massive waterfall.
