Day 83 (June 10): The War on Drugs - An Ocean In Between The Waves

Lost In The Dream: Amazon.co.uk: Music
I sometimes worry my taste is a bit algorithmic. I have written endlessly about sad men pondering stuff over lengthy electric guitar solos and long riffs, so it is not surprising that I've come to The War on Drugs eventually. They're a necessary text for this very specific corner of music. I wouldn't be the "pretending to have the music taste of somebody in their thirties" person I am without them.

Today's song of the day is my favourite song of theirs, "An Ocean In Between the Waves" from their 2014 album Lost in the Dream. Lots of War on Drugs songs descend into what are basically really long jam sessions (that's good), but none do it like this. It really just gets down to brass tacks. Half of the song is just a long solo which gets progressively faster, and I think that's brilliant.

It's actually even better than that. The War on Drugs truly know that the best accompaniment to a long guitar solo is a random exclamation every now and then. This is why a minute from the end, led singer Adam Graduciel yells "woo!", as if he's just realised what he's doing is fun. That "woo!" is essential. It is the butter of the song. It is the essence of the "dudes rock, but maybe they don't?" spirit of The War on Drugs, and I love it.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Month 2: Bright Eyes - At The Bottom of Everything

Image
It's May 19, 2020, and it has been two months since I started this song-diary-cum-blog-cum-something-I'll-think-of-later. It's day 58 of the UK-wide lockdown, though we're now staying alert rather than staying home and I'm pretty sure I saw eight guys who weren't part of the same family playing basketball in the park yesterday, which doesn't seem right. Today's post comes from you in the middle of my final exam week, which is a strange time to be writing a daily blog. Honestly, though exams are still a gigantic fart in an elevator, I'm mildly grateful that something is happening to make a week feel different at all. Next month will come to you from the endless morass of post-degree-in-a-pandemic uncertainty, and while I look forward to watching nothing but Star Wars: The Clone Wars all day along, I don't look forward to that bit. It's at this point that I should point out that my degree ends in three days. It's kind of a whole thing,
Read more

Day 58 (May 16): Public Enemy - Harder Than You Think

Image
It's a shame when a song gets boxed in as an advertising thing. It kind of squeezes the life out of them; artistic achievement reduced to corporate ones and zeroes, the actual meaning of the song dissolving into a catchy jingle. On the other hand... Look, there he goes, defending capitalism again. Well, hold on one second. Sometimes, songs being jinglefied for popular consumption on TV is good and interesting, actually. Sometimes it recommends music to an audience who would absolutely not think of otherwise consuming it. Sometimes it's just curiously weird. Such is today's song of the day, "Harder Than You Think" from Public Enemy's 2007 mouthful How Do You Sell a Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul? . For reasons I'm actually very happy keeping a fun mystery, this song is now best known in Britain as the main jingle for the coverage of the 2012 Paralympics. None of the actual lyrics were ever used, so audiences could happily be fooled into t
Read more

Month 1: Murray Gold - The Shepherd's Boy

Image
It's April 19, 2020, and it has been one month since I started this Frankenstein's monster of a song- diary-blog experiment. It's day 28 of the UK-wide lockdown, with no perceptible end in sight. During this month, this blog has accidentally become my main source of how I can tell human time. You might have noticed that the days are increasingly congealing into a gigantic mulch that are impossible to tell apart, after all. Days of the week? Ha. Everything is Sunday is Monday is Thursday but definitely never Saturday now. Dates? Don't be ridiculous. Months are just about possible to keep straight, but don't be trying to actually distinguish where we are in that big blob of time. There is the golden times of Before Corona, there is the endless Now, and there is After Corona, a theoretical future both close and far, depending on which government exit strategy leaks you read. Moving forward or progressing in the endless Now seems basically impossible, because every da
Read more