Lost in the Dream

The War on Drugs' latest album, Lost in the Dream, is a curious hybrid. They sound very much like Arcade Fire, and employ a space-agey Pink Floyd sound, but also reminded me of Bob Dylan, if he had a band that played a lot of reverb guitar.

This album is mostly the work of Adam Granduciel, who writes, produces, and sings lead vocals with a nasal twang reminiscent of Dylan. According to Wikipedia they are included in the "shoegazer" genre, but I dispute that, as most of their music is not doleful, and despite having a song called "Suffering" is rather joyous.

The Arcade Fire influence can be heard in a couple of tracks. "Red Eyes," in fact, is the best Arcade Fire song of the past few years, including everything on Arcade Fire's last album. "Burning" is also faux Arcade Fire. The Dylan influence can be heard most strongly on "Eyes to the Wind." There's a harmonica and pedal steel guitar on that track, but also something called space rhodes and arp omni II, which I doubt Dylan has ever used.

Pink Floyd can be heard in tracks like the instrumental "The Haunting Idle," and "Disappearing," which has a wonderful Floydish guitar riff.

All in all this is a luscious, pleasant disc to listen to, but since I've mentioned so many other acts in this post I can't call them incredibly original. I would discuss the lyrics, but the lyric sheet is written in a handwritten scrawl that is impossible to read. As the title suggests, it's mostly about dream states, and maybe about hallucinogenics.