The War On Drugs

A Deeper Understanding

ATLANTIC

8/10

Granduciel admits a little more light.

- Jason Anderson

IN the songs of Adam Granduciel, it can feel like it’s always 3am. His lyrics contain just as many references to darkness – both literal and figurative – as they do to his desires to find a way out or maybe just get a little rest. But clearly The War On Drugs’ main man is used to the state of mind that typically accompanies the wee hours, which is not so surprising given his reputation for painstaking perfectionism. Among his other enemies of sleep are the feelings of anxiety and isolation that he expressed so starkly in the most dimly lit passages of Lost In The Dream, the Philadelphia band’s moving, mesmerising and much-lauded third album that hogged the top spot in bestof-year lists (including Uncut’s) in 2014. Whichever inner demon deserves the credit, it puts a long stretch of highway in between him and the dawn’s early light.

Sure enough, A Deeper Understanding opens with the first of several new tracks that situate Granduciel back in the time and place he knows so well. In “Up All Night”, his agitation has him “spinnin’ round on the floor”, as he sings in a raspy murmur. A gorgeous exercise in yearning that finds Granduciel at his most Dylanesque, “Pain” begins with the instruction to “go to bed now” – alas, there’s more brooding to do. In the equally winsome “Clean Living”, he admits that “Sometimes I’ll lay in the dark/ Just to see if I can feel a spark.”