The War on Drugs offer a vague but stirring lyricism on I Don’t Live Here Anymore

The War on Drugs are a classic-rock throwback to the days of reticent men playing eloquent guitar solos. Actually, it’s not entirely fair to call Adam Granduciel tongue-tied: he spends a good portion of his band’s new album singing. But his lyrics evoke powerful feelings that evade precise definition, with lots of questions and conditionals. His words seem to verbalise the solos that course purposefully through the songs rather than vice versa, deploying those solos to illuminate the meaning of the words.

I Don’t Live Here Anymore is the Philadelphia outfit’s fifth album. Formed and led by Granduciel, the band made their breakthrough with 2014’s Lost in the Dream, an inspired fusion of US heartland rock and krautrock’s motorik beat. Its expansive soundworld emerged from Granduciel’s experiences of depression and isolation, worked through during long sessions of obsessive studio work. He is, or was, the kind of perfectionist that can spend hours searching for the perfect snare drum sound.

Its follow-up, 2017’s A Deeper Understanding, was the product of an even more intense period of studio hermeticism. A US top 10 hit, it cemented The War on Drugs’ reputation as a last hurrah for a musical form thought to be on the verge of extinction, the Great American Rock Band. Not unlike the related concept of the Great American Novel, the idea of a band incarnating the spirit of the nation has come to seem bombastic and presumptuous. In that respect, Granduciel’s vague but stirring lyricism, avoiding definitive statements, makes The War on Drugs an apt iteration for today.

Their 10 new songs were made with a reduction in their leader’s production meticulousness. One reason is time lost to parenthood: Granduciel had a son in 2019 with the actor Krysten Ritter. (The child’s name is Bruce, after Springsteen.) A suspicion that A Deeper Understanding lavished too much of its imaginative resources on texture rather than the shape of the songs might have also contributed to the new looser approach. If so, the change has paid off.

“I can’t recall what I believe in,” Granduciel asks himself in opening song “Living Proof”. It is the first of many tentative observations. In “Change” he wonders whether he was “born on the wrong day”. In “Wasted” he is “tired in ways I can’t explain”. His vocals are languid rather than troubled, appealing to listen to. Shifts in the pitch and intonation of his phrasing bring moments of dramatic resolution to the songs, even while the words themselves remain uncertain.

Meanwhile, the music is vibrant and expressive. The drumming locks into a steady groove as layers of instrumentation build up around it, a rhythmically dynamic, harmoniously rich mix of synthesisers, piano, bass and guitars. The latter talk more volubly than the singer at the microphone — in jangling tones and distorted snarls, with ecstatically drawn-out notes and emphatically windmilled chords, through sharp interventions and tender encouragement. The sense of feeling is all the stronger for not being spelt out.

★★★★☆

‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’ is released by Atlantic Records