A Deeper Understanding

A Deeper Understanding feels like the ideal War on Drugs album--the one where the songs are the strongest and the instruments the most uniquely cathartic, and with a mist that gives it all an alluringly blinding sheen.

He has further upgraded, re-geared and honed the sound The War On Drugs have been working towards, taking the style and vision of 80s rock titans and updating it to something that sounds truly modern, but with that nostalgic haze.

Both claustrophobic and breathtakingly expansive, The War on Drugs’ latest effort is their best.

It’s the impossible sweep and grandeur of the music that tells the real story, of how a rush of sound can take us somewhere we can’t explain.

A Deeper Understanding is an epic, panoramic record, but its effect is an intimate, personal one. The way these song stretch out make them grand, but they still leave space for you, the listener.

A Deeper Understanding doesn’t seem to arrive at any conclusions or answers to the questions of self and suffering that Lost in the Dream addressed, since they are inherently unanswerable. For The War On Drugs though, the importance has always lied in the journey, and this powerful record proves that the band has no signs of stopping along the way.

When the songs are this satisfying, when each guitar solo tears through cynicism like a wet paper bag, sometimes good old fashioned honesty is more than fine. It’s downright beautiful.

Instead of trying to recreate the heightened catharsis of Lost In The Dream, A Deeper Understanding suggests a viable path forward from that turning point, a journey blown out to widescreen proportions that breathes new life into a familiar sound.

A raft of obscure synths has given A Deeper Understanding a glitzy, gilded aura that makes Granduciel’s trademark lyrical tussle between comfort and the possibility of change more pronounced. They contrast beautifully with his weathered voice.

Lovers of the plush paranoia of 2014’s breakthrough album ‘Lost In The Dream’ will be relieved that his fourth outing doesn’t touch that dial. From the opening highway piano judder of ‘Up All Night’ it’s like losing yourself once more in some lost golden age of MOR.

The result is a record that banishes any listener cynicism on first contact; a wide-eyed look into the wild blue yonder.

Adam Granduciel achieves full-on sonic rapture with his band's latest LP, an abstract-expressionist mural of synth-pop and heartland rock colored by bruised optimism and some of his most generous, incandescent guitar ever.

Though there's nothing here to grab headlines, A Deeper Understanding reclaims and explores the distinctive soundscapes, vastness, and haunted psyche of Lost in the Dream, and that in itself is significant.

Put some headphones on, find a good window to stare out of, and let time stretch to the horizon; A Deeper Understanding will reward your patience.

It’s not as immediate an album as Lost In The Dream, and a couple of quality control lapses prevent it from being a truly great record. Yet it’s still a dauntingly accomplished behemoth from a group who grow in stature with every release they put out.

A Deeper Understanding represents another step forward for the War on Drugs, and is among their most ambitious, consistent, and emotionally searing works yet.

For the most part, it’s hard to deny that Granduciel has succeeded in pimping his wheels for bigger journeys.

The album is more a distillation of the formula they toyed with on previous albums. It's not as new anymore, but it sure sounds great. [Jul - Aug 2017, p.61]

The War On Drugs might never quite find what they're looking for but with a record as gloriously realised as A Deeper Understanding, it feels like they're getting closer every day. [Sep 2017, p.104]

The results is some of the richest, most compelling and least lonely-sounding music of Granduciel's career. [Sep 2017, p.24]

It is a strange alchemy afoot in their presentation; their affinities for pedestrian rock-lite can either be regarded as dismissable trash, or the most intensely gratifying thing you’ve ever heard, depending on which side of the bed you woke up on the day you hear it.

Opener Up All Night moves through the formulaic pop gears as smoothly as Don Henley cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway, while Holding On is a slickly realised mid-tempo foot tapper. However, shorn of the novelty factor, such middle-of-the-road material remains better suited to balmy summer nights and drivetime radio than to repeated home listening.

Long and loses steam at times, but it delivers.

A big, bold sound isn't a bad thing, but the fact that this album is a little less engrossing than the band's past efforts shows that the most interesting thing about the War on Drugs' music isn't the way they channel their rock influences, but the way they subvert them.