*SPECIAL POST* #3
This one is a re-post, and will be of interest to those with the new War On Drugs live album, 'Live Drugs'. It features two sessions from 2014, promotional radio work for the now acclaimed 'Lost In The Dream' album.
The initial post was inspired
by the 11-minute War On Drugs single 'Thinking Of A Place' (included on the live album) which led me to spend
sometime re-listening to these radio sessions.
In
2003 vocalist, songwriter and guitarist, Adam Granduciel moved from Oakland to
Philadelphia and met Kurt Vile - also a fellow multi-instrumentalist. Sharing
the same musical interests particularly Bob Dylan they became firm friends and
began working together as Kurt Vile and the Violators.
Adam's
own project The War On Drugs officially began in 2005 but it would be sometime
later, that the duo released their debut EP titled 'Barrel Of Batteries' in
2008. Later that year a full-length album 'Wagonwheel Blues' was released.Kurt
Vile followed this up shortly after with his own debut, titled 'Constant
Hitmaker' before focusing on his own solo work. He signed to Matador Records
and over the following two year period released two albums and some EP's, all
featuring his friend Adam Granduciel, who had continued to perform live as part
of the Violators.
In
2011 the War On Drugs second album 'Slave Ambient’ was released to critical
acclaim, appearing on the best albums of the year lists, side by side with Kurt
Vile's own album 'Smoke Ring For Halo, on which Adam also appeared. 'Slave
Ambient' broke the War On Drugs to a wider audience. Vile contributed guitar on
two of the album's tracks. Much like the Hold Steady before them, they have
assimilated these influences and synthesized their own fresh identifiable sound
and perspective.
The
third album 'Lost In The Dream' was released in March 2014 and built further on
that success with positive and enthusiastic reviews. To promote the album, the
group set out on a national US tour. Before playing at their next scheduled
stop at the Neptune Theatre in Seattle, earlier that day, they dropped in to
KEXP and recorded the session and interview included here. It was broadcast in
16 bit lossless.
The
group are:
Adam
Granduciel: guitar, vocals
Dave
Hartley: bass
Charlie
Hall: drums
Robbie
Bennett: keyboards
Anthony
LaMarca: acoustic guitar (also keyboards, not this KEXP session)
The
interview by DJ Cheryl Waters was particularly illuminating, and the most salient
questions and answers with bandleader Adam Granduciel follow below.
Adam,
I know that the new album was born out of a difficult period in your life and
maybe you've put all of that emotion in the record, but do you feel that there
is a difference between this and 'Slave Ambient'?
"Definitely
I guess I just wanted to be more disciplined with writing and recording. I
wanted to showcase what the live band had become over the years. 'Slave
Ambient' made us, like it forced us to tour for a year and a half and become a
band. We were learning how to play together but also re-interpreting these
songs. They weren't solo recordings but they also weren't band recordings. I
really liked the way that the band changed the way that those songs happened
live.
So
for the record I wanted something that could do that again, and really play to
everyone's strengths in the studio. Without really, maybe making a band record
the same way, that you'd think, you want to make one. So it's still the same
kind of recording approach but just with the idea in mind, that I wanted Robbie
to play beautiful piano and Dave to play all the sweet bass. To bring Charlie
in on songs that I thought were right up his alley, anytime that happened it
always transformed the recording."
I
heard that you had a long time, like a year, to make this record, writing and
recording it. Is that true?
"Yeah,
all the songs I started in my home studio between June and December of 2012.
They were all kind of sketches or just sparse, pretty loose structures and then
I spent for the most part of 2013, overdubbing and stripping away and re-doing
stuff."
Was
that a luxury? Did you ever have that much time to work on music?
"Well
'Slave Ambient' took a long time too but it wasn't the only thing I had to do.
This time around, this was the only thing. It was a luxury, it was different,
with 'Slave Ambient too I realized that I couldn't make a record the way I had
made that one again and I don't think I could make one, like the way I made
this one. I think personally the goal is to just try to get to a point, where
you can sit in a room with your band and make a record in maybe a few months.
Live as a band, like all the records we love so much but I think it's a process
trying to get there."
I
get the idea that song writing is maybe more of an intensive process for you?
"Sometimes
it's just a matter of exhausting all the possibilities. I mean pretty much all
of the songs on this record were built up from all the stuff I started at home.
We'd build them up and take them to the studio, just kind of build them up as
we go. There wasn't really a moment when we were all together in a room playing
a song. Some of the songs were written fairly quickly, 'Eyes To The Wind' I
wrote that in my kitchen in like a few minutes strangely enough, but the
finished recording of that took about a year. When I first had the idea I knew
what the song meant to me. I knew it had a feeling, like a magic about it. I
guess the recording process is about trying to unlock that feeling and also make
it sound huge but also try to hold on to whatever like little naiveties, when
you first had that little idea."
Do
you know when you hear that magic? That seems to be what's going on with people
with this album; you've just really hit it on every song. Do you find yourself
questioning over and over or changing things all the time?
"Yeah,
I usually know when I start the song in my house and I listen to it for days
and days in a row, it's like the only thing I can think of, it might be really
sparse but I can hear what the mood is. Like in that first song we played 'An
Ocean In Between The Waves' that was like, it started off super raw in my
house, just an organ, some guitar, a drum machine but I just knew it had
something important. We were trying to chase that for a long time. How do you
keep this beautiful little sound but also make it full band arrangements,
because that's what I want. I want songs that sound like what this band sounds
like."
You've
got a lot of shows and quite a tour ahead of you?
"We
do actually, we just drove from Denver to Seattle (1,333 miles / 2,145 km), we
did that yesterday, pretty much. We have all the West Coast; Portland, San
Francisco, LA, San Diego and over to Europe in May."
Later
in the year, the band toured Europe for a second time, before flying off on
their debut tour of Australia. The Studio 105 session in Paris was recorded in
front of a small invited audience, as part of the promotional commitments on
that second European tour. The live sound on this is different from the KEXP
session, more like that of the tour where the keyboards have greater prominence.
The War On Drugs
Studio 105, Maison de la Radio, Paris, France
1st November 2014
Excellent FM
Broadcast by France Inter radio: November 1, 2014 on the "Coming up sessions" show.
01. Eyes To The Wind
02. Burning
03. An Ocean In Between The Waves
04. Under The Pressure
05. In Reverse
06. DJ and band introduction
07. Red Eyes
08. Suffering
09. Coming Through
10. I Hear You Calling (cover Bill Fay 1971)
Lineage: Marantz tuner with a Zoom H4 > Sd card to PC, wav to Audacity (volume and tracks), FLAC (TLH)Original upload by letsgo - November 2014
LINK 1
The War On Drugs
In Studio Performance
KEXP-FM
Seattle, WA
March 28, 2014
01. intro
02. An Ocean In Between The Waves
03. chat
04. Eyes To The Wind
05. interview & band intros
06. Red Eyes
07. chat
08. Suffering
09. outro
Source: KEXP-FM Windows Media stream @ 1.4Mbps > Sound Forge Pro 10.0a @ 24 bit/48 kHz
Recorded and transferred By: Dennis Orr
Transfer: WAV > Sound Forge Pro 10.0a (fades & normalize) > CDWav (tracking) > iZotope MBIT+ (dithered and downsampled to 16 bit/44.1 kHz) > Trader's Little Helper (level 5) > FLAC > TagScanner 5.1 (tagging)
LINK 2
