Review Summary: In reverse, I'm moving
Lost in the Dream was everything a man could want from a breakthrough album. Adam Granduciel led the War on the Drugs to the top of numerous 2014 end of year lists by throwing Springsteen, Dylan and a bunch of your favourite psychedelic and shoegaze bands into a blender and lathering on the atmosphere. It was and is a triumph, building on 2011’s rollicking Slave Ambient and securing the Philadelphia band a major label deal. Now, they’re back with another sprawling work of nostalgic Americana but the results are not quite so satisfying.
A Deeper Understanding sees the band attempt to make a longer, more grandiose version of
Lost in the Dream but lose a little something on the way.
A cursory listen reveals that Granduciel is still writing massive rock songs and doing so with panache. There are more than a few beauties standing out from the crowd, among which is ‘Strangest Thing’. This top-drawer tune brings the albums’ best riff together with an enchanting vocal performance from Granduciel. It feels totally carefree and creates a sense of place about as well as anything from
Lost in the Dream. 11-minute behemoth ‘Thinking of a Place’ evokes something similar with lines like ‘I’m moving through the dark, of a long black night’ straight out of the War on Drugs playbook. The guitar work is positively stunning here and nobody can deny that the band have honed a captivating sound.
‘In Chains’ can only be described as wonderful, as the War on Drugs push their sound left of the dial and succeed admirably. It could be one of most passionately performed and executed songs of the year and leaves us in no doubt of the band’s many talents. ‘Up All Night’ also works well as an opener, bringing together a satisfying mix of instruments as it sets the pace nicely. Despite these gems there is a sense that
A Deeper Understanding is missing something. ‘Knocked Down’ is pretty slow and unsatisfying, containing a weak hook and some bland lyrics delivered pretty poorly. This is a song that should have been cut from the runtime but you feel was only included as a change of pace so that all of the first 6 tracks didn’t end up as 6-minute mid-tempo rockers. Single ‘Pain’ also struggles to get going, perhaps suffering from a related problem: there are too many longish tracks here that sound pretty similar instrumentally and don’t do enough to leave a lasting impression or justify their runtimes.
Additionally, Granduciel’s vocals are sometimes left exposed on this release. He’s never had the greatest voice but is usually a good enough producer to more than make up for this. Here his voice is on occasion pushed to the forefront when it seems like it shouldn’t be and buried away just when you think it should be front and centre. Lyrically too, there are examples of meaningless imagery where it feels like some lines from
Lost in the Dream have just been fed into a thesaurus and recycled. Lyrics, admittedly, aren’t a huge concern when you’re The War on Drugs but over 60 plus minutes you wonder whether some of weaker lyrics are only really noticeable, and therefore a problem, because the compositions that surround them are often less hair raising than fans have come to expect.
It's unfortunate that
A Deeper Understanding was always going to face endless comparisons to
Lost in the Dream. That’s partly a legacy of 2014’s album of the year but partly due to
A Deeper Understanding sounding so similar. That needn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but this record isn’t quite paced as well, isn’t produced as well and lacks for new ideas. While it’s still a really pleasant listen, previous effort
Lost in the Dream is a modern classic with a multitude of individually memorable songs that takes the listener on a meaningful journey, while
A Deeper Understanding just doesn’t feel special because it makes the mistake of trying to outdo a masterpiece at its own game while lacking its keen focus or quantity of memorable riffs.
A Deeper Understanding is a fine album, it just sits in the shadow of the past, managing to both disappoint and command repeated listens at once.
