I Don't Live Here Anymore, Joe

The War on Drugs aren't a Philly band anymore.

I don't say this to be pedantic, or the argue against pedantry. They were founded in Fishtown, they played their first gig at Johnny Brenda's. One might argue that a Philly band we'll always be a "Philly band" regardless of physical geography. Maybe that's true. But it's definitely true that Adam Granduciel lives in Los Angeles, and is (probably still?) dating a movie star, and he's the mastermind behind this project, and even if you consider the other WoD members, only like one of them still calls Philadelphia home. So to say that the band is a "Philly band" is at least partially a misnomer at this point.

No one gives a shit about any of this, by the way, not even me. I'm just grasping at straws here, trying to figure out a slight misgiving I have about I Don't Live Here Anymore, trying to figure out what has changed, trying to play with the idea that maybe it has something to do with leaving or not leaving your hometown (see the title of the album), since that's something tangential that I have at least a little experience with personally.

Because something is slightly off here. I can't quite articulate it, but I'm hoping if I sit down in front of this keyboard long enough and keep moving my fingers quickly enough, I'll get that revelation before I reach the end of this review.

It's particularly concerning, because my very first impression after the introductory listen of I Don't Live Here Anymore was: "This sure is a War on Drugs album." If you're like me and have been at least a cursory fan since like Slave Ambient, then you'll know what I mean. That midtempo bass and snare shuffle kicks in, locks in, a piano hits some chords, a majestic guitar rings out, and Granduciel belts out some nasally ambiguous lyrics, creating a sound that encapsulates the heartland of America that you've only ever seen in your dreams. That's the formula. They do it well. They've done it well on the past three albums.

Ironic, then, that much ballyhoo has been over the fact that one of the most obvious themes on I Don't Live Here Anymore is the idea of "change." It's literally the name of a song, but it's also a word that pops up in pretty much every other lyric sheet on this album. Yet my first impression was that there wasn't much change here; this is the sound that the War on Drugs have honed and perfected. Doubly-ironic, then—or maybe the irony is cancelled out—that after like eleven more listens, I actually started to believe it. Something's changed.

There is a word at the edge of my brain that might go some way to explain it: "polished." This is a polished-sounding album. It sounds expensive, which isn't really an adjective I've ever used regarding music before (especially because I usually listen to music files at 192kbps illegally ripped from a YouTube playlist and played through old earbuds that are held together by electrical tape—nothing about any musical experience I have is "expensive-sounding"). But I dunno, that might explain it, that word.

Here's a phrase: soft rock. I'm just free-associating at this point. But couldn't some of this sound like adult contemporary soft rock that you might hear on like B101 or Ben FM? I'm not saying that you'd literally hear the War on Drugs' "I Don't Want to Wait" on B101; I'm saying that there are elements of soft rock music that I traditionally cringe toward that also litter some of the songs on this album. Tell me the synth tones on "I Don't Want to Wait" don't sound like soft rock. Tell me that the backing vocals on the title track don't sound like some fucking yacht rock deep cut or something.

I don't even know what I'm talking about. I seriously don't. I don't know why I'm spending so much time trying to pick this album apart and sniff out the flaws. There are a few. But overall, I hear excellence, even though, yeah, there's something that doesn't sit exactly perfect.

That's the thing, though, right? It's not perfect, but no album is. And this whole exercise kinda feels like I'm grading on a curve. The War on Drugs are very, very good, and maybe I came to this review with a fine-tooth comb in a way that I wouldn't for some band or artist that I don't think as highly of. This is like the final two weeks of The Great British Baking Show when Paul and Prue are like "the bakers that are left are REALLY good bakers so we're gonna have to be tough on them." If I had never heard of the War on Drugs before and was coming into this week with a fresh slate, I would've been blown away. But after a while you get numb to a product that approaches excellence. You start to selfishly want more. And the flaws are magnified, for better or worse. That's why this album is going to get 0.5 pukes more than, like, Olivia Rodrigo, even though I Don't Live Here Anymore is at least seventeen times better than SOUR. Context, etc.

Wouldn't it be cool to come to something like the War on Drugs with fresh eyes, though? I'm jealous of everyone whose entry point is I Don't Live Here Anymore. If that were the case, then I wouldn't be preoccupied with "what has changed," if something has even changed at all (because maybe it's all in my head). Instead, this would be a HOLY SHIT moment. The War on Drugs are fucking awesome! Maybe I'd approach something like "Wasted" as a grand achievement in musical history, as opposed to what I consider it now—a clear highlight on the album because it captures the manic energy that the previous two or three albums were able to get to a lot more often.

Maybe if there's any minuscule amount of ambivalence on my part, it has to do with the lyrics? Granduciel's lyrics are proudly obtuse, dim shadows just barely pointing you in the right direction. I thought maybe there might be even more to "Wasted" than the energy and emotion on the surface, so I read through the lyric sheet, and man, I can't really get anything out of it (and I would've been easy pickings, with such a title, and the subject matter that such a title could easily convey). It's more of a Rorschach test than anything else. It can mean whatever you want it to mean.

That's purposeful on Granduciel's part, I think. To flesh out the parenthetical from my second paragraph—is Adam Granduciel still dating Krysten Ritter? Granduciel has denied rumors of a split, but has also pointedly refused to speak about his baby momma in any recent interview I could get my hands on. It's none of my fucking business who is dating who, even B-list celebrities (or, in Ritter's case, B-----list celebrities), but Occam's razor tells me that they split, and Granduciel doesn't want I Don't Live Here Anymore to be a "divorce album," even though the lyrics could make it seem like a divorce album, because then people will listen to a song like "Victim" and think about his ex-girlfriend, ya know? That ruins the Rorschach test. If you wanna listen to "Victim" and see a butterfly, then that's your prerogative. I appreciate it. But I also think that specificity helps occasionally, and maybe when I think that something is "off" about I Don't Live Here Anymore, I'm talking about that.

Or maybe we should just keep pressing that "personal context" button, and assume that I'm the problem here. Like I said, there's value in being blissfully unaware of special bands, because when they finally come into full focus, it's a gift. There's a disservice in following the War on Drugs for the past decade, and that's the way that a towering rock epic might occasionally seem a little ho hum from within the hole I've dug. I was thinking about this yesterday when I read Ian Cohen's review of a pretty cool young post-punk band out of NY, Geese, and their new album, Projector. Cohen discredits Geese for not sounding unique enough in the lineage of other cool young NY bands. But he wouldn't feel that way if Geese was the first cool young NY band that he became familiar with, ya know? So maybe I really am making up the whole "something feels different" angle here. Maybe that's just a reflex when presented with something that ultimately feels pretty uncomfortably similar to previous output from this same rock 'n' roll band.

Or maybe I'm just grappling with something larger than this. Because now it's Thursday night, and I'm on the long SEPTA ride home from a happy hour, and I have nothing else to do but finish up an album review that I would've normally had finished by now. I thankfully still have time to listen to a lot of music throughout my week, but I currently don't have that much extra time to write about it, so this review was mostly written piecemeal over a series of 30-minute blocks throughout the week. So what we really have here in the preceding reviewing is Joe K*** grappling, in real time, the fact that this album might just be too damn large to digest over the course of seven days. Because now I'm listening to "Wasted" and it's hitting harder than before, and I'm listening to "Occasional Rain" and I'm feeling hopeful (on a goddamn SEPTA bus, of all places!), and I'm realizing now that the title track's opening line is cribbed from Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm" which is pretty special to me, and yeah, I'm hearing those expensive synths on "I Don't Wanna Wait," and I get it now. There's a comfort here that maybe I was too quick to dismiss in a mad, fractured search for any flaws in this machine. They are there, sure, but they fade the more I listen to it. Like all great, large, dense, colossal albums such as this, it takes time. We're the snake, and this egg is fucking huge, brah.

Anyways, thanks for reading, and thanks for listening. I'm not sure if it made all that much sense, but here we are, hours from deadline, no time to go back and change anything. Ha. "Change." Yes. Enjoy the rest of the reviews, including Dwyer's inevitable review that goes something like "I completely forgot about this album but I just listened to it for the first time while taking a shit and it was pretty okay."

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5