The War On Drugs | Slave Ambient

Most likely to: ride off into the sunset on a rock ‘n’ roll chariot.

Philadelphia’s finest cosmic highwaymen have returned with a sophomore album containing the same mix of earthy Americana and spacey experimentalism that made their previous releases—debut LP Wagonwheel Blues and interim EP Future Weather—so compulsively listenable. Slave Ambient, the finest distillation thus far of The War on Drugs’ aesthetic, balances explosive, Boss-indebted bombast with more tempered, pensive material, uniting the two with a knack for crafting majestic soundscapes and a sense of the infinite.

Of the album’s eight proper, non-instrumental tracks, the thundering, bombastic ones have unsurprisingly received the most initial attention. “Baby Missiles” appeared on Future Weather, but its ecstatic organ, energetic vocals, and searing harmonica (I never thought I’d write those two words together) make it a welcome inclusion. An alternate version of “Brothers” also appeared on Future Weather, but here it’s revamped with cannon-like drums and new layers of atmosphere. “Your Love Is Calling My Name,” with its heavy drone and ceaseless, robotic drums, is the most powerful, hard-charging track on the album; along with its instrumental mirror “Original Slave,” it’s an all-out highway-in-space jam. (Not to mention, it performs that time-tested trick of trailing off halfway through and then surging back with more force than ever.) And “Come to the City,” heralded (correctly) by many as the album’s centerpiece, is a titanic piece of stadium rock, building inexorably for four-and-a-half minutes after rising out of atmospheric intro “The Animator” like an airship emerging from a cloud bank.

But the more patient numbers deserve just as much credit; they are equally hypnotic, and equally panoramic in their gaze. On tracks like “It’s Your Destiny,” “Best Night,” and “I Was There,” the band has a chance to show off their ability to sculpt sound more subtly. Each song comes to life with frontman Adam Granduciel’s drawling vocals over a metronomic drumbeat (even on a song as energetic as “Your Love,” he sounds laid back). Around this, the band expertly weaves a rich harmonic web, composed of spindly, lyrical guitar melodies, warm piano, snatches of harmonica, shimmering synths, and shoegazing guitar drone. Granduciel typically sings his last word around two-thirds of the way through a song, allowing for some sublimely hypnotic outros that are ambient without ever losing their propulsion.

This is where that surging sense of the infinite comes in. Each song strains to burst its artificial boundaries and coast on a warm bed of sound towards the horizon, and Granduciel’s lyrics are the perfect crucible for the music’s expansive sentiment. He is a purveyor of a well-trodden romantic, open-road mindset as old as recorded music, and he constantly flirts with vague geographic signifiers—by the ocean, on the freeway, down at the harbor. His references to strugglin’, ramblin’, movin’, and driftin’ throughout the album form to create a sort of mythic narrator, a traveler who’s never content to stay in one place for too long.

Closer “Black Water Falls” is a perfect example of this quality, and it proves to be a lovely way to end the album. The song also contains some of Granduciel’s most Dylanesque diction; in fact, I wondered at first if the song was in some small way paying homage to Dylan’s “Masters of War.” It shares that song’s 3/4 acoustic strumming and threatening prophecies about the future of a vague “you,” and the Blackwater military contractor could be called a contemporary “master of war,” to be sure. Well, it turns out Black Water Falls is a state park in Appalachian West Virginia (which makes much more sense given the lyrics about “the coal mountain range”), but this certainly doesn’t detract from the song’s merits. Nor does it make Granduciel’s drawl and impressionistic lyrics any less reminiscent of Dylan, especially when he sings:

“Remember me when you dissolve in the rain / When the rivers run dry through the coal
mountain range / When you turn to the name you invented to keep / Your identity safe
from the smell of defeat / And there is no way / To carve your righteous paths of rage /
By holding the candle to those half your age / You jaw will be locked from hornets and
bees / And you’ll understand why I leave so suddenly / With the breeze.”

And leave he does, drifting away on the wind of one of those wonderful outros, firing off some distant “woo hoos” as he goes. That’s the last we hear from the album’s itinerant narrator, but I think I speak for many of those who have heard Slave Ambient when I say it’ll be soundtracking many a future road trip.