So, this ‘War on Drugs’, like the one that Richard Nixon announced back in 1971, would seem to have confused aims. Fortunately the result is a much more satisfying one.
War On Drugs – Wagonwheel Blues
www.thewarondrugs.net/ http://www.myspace.com/thewarondrugs
It would be easy to peg War On Drugs as yet another bunch of classic rock revivalists. Especially as opener ‘Arms Like Boulders’ sounds almost exactly like Blonde on Blonde era Dylan. This is emphasised by Adam Granduciel vocals and gnomic utterances such as ‘God is a catapult waiting for the right time’. This impression is further bolstered by Springsteen-esque touches on Taking the Farm. I was all ready to place them lying somewhere between E-Street and Highway 61.
On listening to the whole album it becomes clear that this approach doesn’t hold water. The Dylan/Springsteen influences are filtered through the kind of sonic experimentation more familiar in to post-rocking shoe-gazers. There is harmonica throughout the album, but unlike on a Bob Dylan record it is often distorted. Twists of droning organ or synth abound. The apogee of this approach is the spacey slow-burning There Is No Urgency, where amidst the ambient music, Grunduciel sounds most like Dylan.
This approach shouldn’t work and in the hands of lesser talents the album could feel like what is known in the second-hand car market as a ‘cut-and-shut’ – a vehicle welded from the front of one and the back of the other. However the disparate elements are woven with skill and placed intelligently together so that the album does have a natural flow.
So, this ‘War on Drugs’, like the one that Richard Nixon announced back in 1971, would seem to have confused aims. Fortunately the result is a much more satisfying one.
Words: Rover