“I START A SONG FROM A SPACE THAT FEELS CALM”

The War On Drugs leader Adam Granduciel reveals how he wrote their brilliant new album - and why he loves to record with one “magical guitar”.

- Ellie Rogers

Adam Granduciel has come a long way since forming The War On Drugs in Philadelphia in 2005 - a journey that has taken his band from the margins of indie rock to mainstream success. The first breakthrough came in 2014 with album number three, Lost In The Dream, but it was the follow-up, 2017’s A Deeper Understanding, that gave The War On Drugs a worldwide hit - top 10 hit in the US, the UK and beyond - and confirmed Granduciel as one of the most gifted songwriters in modern rock.

Now comes a new album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, which ranges from heartland rock to ambient psychedelia, well-considered sparsity to mammoth intensity. “The songs come out of different guitars,” Adam says, as he discusses his approach to writing and gear, his experiments in sound, and his evolution as a player...

Who did you love listening to when you were learning to play guitar and write songs, and who do you think really left their mark on you?

When I was really young, I loved Pearl Jam. I loved Mike Bloomfield when I got a little older. Then Neil Young, Hendrix and also R.E.M. I got a guitar right around the time of [R.E.M.’s 1994 album] Monster, and the whole sound of that record is the AC30 with the tremolo. It was just so cool that basically every song had the exact same guitar sound. I think that’s when I learned what an AC30 was, so I remember that being a big record when learning to play guitar. From there it’s been a constant evolution of learning about whoever is blowing my mind!

The Vox AC30 and the tremolo are quite familiar sounds in your work. Would you say those were the things that stuck on a practical level?