The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream

The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream

Rating: 9.5

There are names that I can (and will) throw out when talking about The War on Drugs, specifically their newest, best album, Lost in the Dream. I won’t be the first to draw these comparisons – in fact, they’ve been made ad nauseum since the group’s breakout second release, Slave Ambient, in 2012. Still, they’re fun comparisons to make, especially when mashed together in sentences that make little sense: it’s “Dancing in the Dark” Springsteen run through a Cars filter and laced with the most propulsive, “Running Down a Dream”-era Tom Petty. It’s 80’s Bob Dylan road-tripping with 80’s Don Henley, blowing lines off the dash and actually coming up with something good.

     
       
While it would be easy to get caught up in the comparisons, The War on Drugs have crystallized into their own sound on Lost in the Dream – an era-less blend of chugging drums, gauzy instrumentals and jams that are fluid and electric in equal measure. Like any great album, the tracks reveal their myriad details and emotional resonance when you sit still and allow them to open up. What it amounts to is a collection of great songs with even greater moments. The triumphant “Whoo!” in “Red Eyes” and explosive guitar in “An Ocean in Between the Waves” are genuinely goose-bump inducing, while “Eyes to the Wind” and title track “Lost in the Dream” churn along at a slower pace but have tucked away some of the group’s slyest and most stirring melodies.

       
       
All said, the comparisons are fair – and generally spot on – but perhaps too narrowly focused on the past. Lost in the Dream looks back and ahead at the same time because, ultimately, it transcends both things, floating instead in a haze of its own version of rock history; one in which the marriage between rambling-man Americana and emotive, synth-driven rock never collapsed into a steaming pile of cheese.