The War On Drugs – Lost In The Dream

I’m usually deadest against calling anything perfect, except Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, (and that’s only when I’m drunk to annoy the endless Yeezy botherers.) But what Adam Granduciel (The War On Drugs) does on ‘Lost In The Dream’ is as good as perfect.

The War on Drugs

And I don’t mean this record is going to be a generation defining effort, or even a genre defining one, but like Real Estate to whom obvious comparisons are going to be made The War On Drugs have refined their sound with frightening precision. ‘A dream like this is wasted without you.’ Are some of the first words heard on the record, fitting for an album called Lost In The Dream & as the title suggests it’s a restless journey, a sprawling road-trip that seemingly took place to take its creator’s mind off troubled times, or try to at least.

It is a ten track triumph that is all about making the best of a shitty situation. Granduciel has said the album was written and recorded during a deeply depressing time for him and amidst a messy break-up, and that is un-mistakably present on the album. But there is also a more dominant feeling of optimism on show too.

Lost In The Dream is something that begs to be listened to in its entirety, not in bit-sized chunks, what good is a road-trip if you need to keep stopping every 3and a half minutes?

It’s near impossible to single out any highlights as it’s a body of work that rolls from one great moment to the next. Whether that be the hazy mist covered ‘Suffering’ or the great expansive ‘An Ocean In Between The Waves’, all is delivered faultlessly.

Granduciel could have trudged out a self-deprecating and bleak collection of songs on Lost In The Dream, thankfully he seemed much more interested in coming out of the other side with hope, a feeling that makes the journey all worth while in the end.

Matthew Cooper

I try to write knowledgeable things about music. Everything else I get quite annoyed about. Arsenal fan. Terrible swimmer.