The War on Drugs’ New Song Is an 11-Minute Epic
“Thinking of a Place” marks a subtle, focused return from the War on Drugs. Stretching out across 11 minutes, it is less a reintroduction than a reimmersion into Adam Granduciel’s spectral Americana. Nearly every aspect of the song is tenuous, either disappearing or located just beyond our grasp. Granduciel sings, “Love is like a ghost in the distance out of reach.” He warns us, “There’s a darkness over there/But we ain’t going.” He laments a lover who “vanished in the night” while he gazes at the Missouri River. The music shifts between ambient passages of synth and fuzzed-out guitar solos, neither building in intensity nor losing momentum. Instead, Granduciel sounds locked in perpetual motion, sometimes slowing down to observe his surroundings, and sometimes pushing forward and just letting it blur outside the window.
The power of “Thinking of a Place” comes from the way Granduciel communicates urgency through such patient music. In the years since his last album, 2014’s breakthrough Lost in the Dream, his influence has become omnipresent in the indie world, and it’s even appeared in pop songs (not to mention, in reinterpretations of pop songs). While his production style has been co-opted by artists looking to attach an aura of hazy nostalgia to their recordings, each element here—the steady, percussive piano; the quivering harmonica—feels necessary and bold, making Granduciel sound more present than ever. He’s thinking of a place, and, in his hypnotic way, he makes it real.
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