The War on Drugs
A Deeper Understanding

'A Deeper Understanding' (Atlantic Recordings) has been defined by many as one of the albums of the year and the one that clearly cemented the success of The War On Drugs, a group that strike after strike, starting from their beginnings (almost ten years ago now with the album 'Wagonwheel Blues' in 2008) and up to the latest 'Lost In The Dream' in 2014, has virtually never missed a beat, even surviving a traumatic event like the departure of guitarist Kurt Vile, who with frontman Adam Granduciel constituted the main reference point of the band, and whose consequence was a radical remixing of its composition.

It must be said that apparently this separation benefited both parties involved. Since then, in fact, the fame of both The War On Drugs and Kurt Vile has only increased, so much so that today both, albeit each with their own characteristics and sounds (which may often coincide), are considered among the main realities in contemporary American indie-rock music.

With this album, as mentioned, The War On Drugs leave Secretly Canadian and sign with an important label like Atlantic Records. Clearly, the album was particularly anticipated, and the expectations of fans and critics were justifiably high after the praise distributed left and right for 'Lost In the Dream'.

Produced by Adam Granduciel himself, the album is seen as a step forward towards maturity by the group, which in this album abandons the more shoegaze and neo-psychedelic sounds that could have characterized at times the fundamentally indie-rock structure of their compositions, to directly move towards indie singer-songwriter styles that many wanted to define as a new direction for American music in the second decade of the new millennium.

It must be said that for this very reason, the album might have perhaps disappointed fans more passionate about easier and easy-listening sounds, which nonetheless are not lacking here, even if everything is projected in the direction of focusing attention on Granduciel's songwriting, almost like wanting to envelop his figure in an ideal spotlight as was done on the stages of old-time variety theaters.

Truth be told, not being a particularly effective writer, Granduciel focuses everything anyway on that taste for melody which is, after all, a constant of the band and on rather evocative arrangements and rich in a certain evocative use of synths and guitars, which give the album's sound an overall rarefied and non-concrete sound, but that alternates more dream-pop atmospheres ('Pain', 'Strangest Thing', 'Nothing To Find', 'Thinking Of A Place') with certain triumphalisms of U2 derivation already borrowed from Coldplay ('Up All Night', 'In Chains').

Obviously, there are also more 'intimate' moments like the ballads 'Knocked Down' and 'Clean Living' and the closing 'You Don't Have To Go', probably the most representative song of the album, which even starting as a piano ballad, expands like some of Coldplay's more blatant compositions in a desperate attempt, already found in other episodes of the album, to cross paths with Bruce Springsteen or even Neil Young.

If indeed you have read these references somewhere else, regarding this album and then listened searching for traces of two of the most popular songwriters on the North-American continent (probably the most popular after Bob Dylan), and in truth found no imprint that led you in any way to that true American songwriting, which still does not fail to propose new artists and nurture new generations of songwriters, I can tell you, you were not distracted, because within this album there is absolutely none of that type of songwriting.

To be honest, if I must be sincere, there are no contents of any kind within this album and even though it's undeniably the case that 'A Deeper Understanding' is still a listenable album, I cannot at the same time do anything but conclude with all the honesty I am capable of by defining it as the biggest rip-off of the year 2017.