The War on Drugs Find Lightness on the Edge of Town

Frontman Adam Granduciel on how his new baby helped him embrace spontaneity on the band’s fifth album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore.
The War on Drugs Find Lightness on the Edge of Town

You can’t see it but Adam Granduciel is smiling. The photograph that graces the cover of the War on Drugs’ fifth album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, is a candid snap of the songwriter heading to the studio during a blizzard, armed with coffee and a guitar. Because of lockdown, the six-piece band—originally founded in Philadelphia but now spread across the country—was unable to schedule a photoshoot, so Granduciel started a Dropbox where his bandmates could upload photos from their years of sessions together. When he stumbled upon this shot, featuring his bright red flannel against the stark white of the snow, he immediately chopped off the head (“I’ve got this stupid smile... and this weird hat”) and decided not to overthink it. “It’s not perfect,” he admits, “but it slowly started making sense.”

This lightness is a new mode for the War on Drugs. For a long time, the project has been defined by the obsessive tendencies of its leader. These qualities peaked with 2014’s breakthrough Lost in the Dream and its even more meticulous follow-up, 2017’s A Deeper Understanding. While the 10 songs on I Don’t Live Here Anymore share the arena-ready highs of those records—and at some points, even transcend them—the album is defined by a more freewheeling energy, evident in the music as well as Granduciel’s demeanor as he speaks over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. In a tie-dye T-shirt and baseball cap, the 42-year-old songwriter exudes an excitable, youthful energy, and is quick to joke about the same intense parts of his personality that once brought him near a breakdown: “If this was my first time,” he said after discussing the most grueling aspects of the sessions, “I probably would have quit.”

By now, the sound of the War on Drugs is so identifiable that you can trace its influence back through indie peers and multiple generations of stadium rock artists, from the Killers, who enlisted members of the band to collaborate on 2020’s Imploding the Mirage, to the Rolling Stones, who asked Granduciel to remix an outtake on last year’s Goats Head Soup reissue. The latter experience had a profound impact on Granduciel, who has never hid his classic rock ambitions. “Obviously you can’t have your goal to be like Mick Jagger,” he jokes, “but you learn so much in just seven minutes of conversation—the level to which he was invested in this B-side, hearing new things in the mix. It was really inspiring.”

Granduciel is as obsessive a listener as he is a songwriter. Explaining his desire to write catchier, tighter songs, he can cite—with awe—the exact timestamp in R.E.M.’s “Fall on Me” when the chorus comes in. It makes sense for an artist whose music can sometimes feel like a DJ’s megamix of one particular era of commercial rock music—say, the beat from “The Boys of Summer” segueing into the synths from “Walk of Life”' and the saxophone solo from “Dancing in the Dark”—and several of these songs feel like the band’s most reverential yet. The extraordinary “I Don’t Wanna Wait” peaks with an extremely Springsteenian shout of “Show a little faith,” while the slow-burning “Old Skin” builds to a colossal, live-band wallop that would sound right at home on Darkness on the Edge of Town. Which leads us to an important subject: “Oh yeah,” Granduciel tells me, beaming, “My kid’s name is Bruce, by the way.”

The birth of a son—Granduciel’s first with his partner, the actress Krysten Ritter—affected his process in predictable ways: He is quick to sing the praises of a digital amp from Fender that let him rip solos directly into his computer, so as not to wake the baby. But amid lockdown, he also found himself sharing his obsessions with Bruce during long spans of time inside together. “Honestly the kid knows this gear,” he says proudly, offering a virtual tour of his admittedly very complicated-looking music room, filled with modular synths, drum machines, and amplifiers. “Every day he’s turning things on, twisting and patching stuff in. It’s amazing!”

Spending so much time at home, and learning to devote his attention solely on his family, led Granduciel to take a different perspective on music, finding new resonance in spur-of-the-moment performances from his bandmates. The muted opening track “Living Proof” was among the first takes of the song, and the closing “Occasional Rain,” a last minute addition on the tracklist, is as close to a demo as they’ve ever released. These rare indulgences are a way of summoning the energy of the band’s shows, an aspect of his work that Granduciel has missed profoundly. “That’s such an integral part to our thing,” he sighs. “That’s where you shape the music, when you perform it for people.” But with a scheduled 2022 tour ahead of them, bringing the band to the largest venues they have ever played, I Don’t Live Here Anymore embodies that communal feeling all on its own.

Pitchfork: How did being a father affect the process on this record?

Adam Granduciel: Shawn [Everett, engineer and producer] had a kid around the same time, and at first I was worried. But it was one of the biggest blessings ever, because we both got to share in that experience, trying to navigate our schedules and work. The time is not free anymore, so we had to be pretty economical. I’m so used to being able to dive in, all the way. For this record, we didn’t do that. We had to find other ways to immerse ourselves. Like everything I’ve done, I started out thinking I’d be done within two months, because I had all these songs kicking around. And months later, you’re at the lowest point where you have no new ideas and everything sounds like gibberish, and you have to climb your way back to something that feels like music. But you get used to it. You’re like, “This is the part of the process where everything sucks.”

Sometimes you hear about these records like, “Oh, I had 70 songs...” I guess because I don’t work that way, I just get attached to the 10 ideas that I can explore. Sonically, I can shape them and have fun with them, and try to make myself a better writer. The other day, I saw something about [an album by Kurt Vile, formerly a guitarist in the War on Drugs] Childish Prodigy. That’s Kurt’s record, obviously, but I was along for the ride. Every day in the studio, I was there. We worked on that record for so long, and it was always evolving and changing. That’s kind of where the first spark of inspiration was to get deep in your own music. It’s an ongoing relationship. I hope that with all that work and attention to detail, it’s an offering to our fans. I take it seriously.

Some of the lyrics on this album feel more direct as well. What is the writing process like for you?

It’s not always the easiest process for me. The songs exist for a while, and some lyrics are based in reality and the rest is gibberish. Back in the day, I would get really sentimental about the gibberish. You know, the chorus of “Red Eyes” is not even words—it’s just sounds. But this time, I wanted to get better at writing and trying to craft my ideas. There was something inherent in each song I felt like I wanted to say. Sometimes it’s not until everything is done that I start to understand it more.

I was just trying to make it feel as real and as personal as possible. Up until the last minute, there was a line in “Occasional Rain” about a fir tree—and Dave loved it. Then one night, I was driving to this par three near our house to smoke and watch people golf, and I was listening to the demo, and I changed the line to “par 3.” Dave was like, “What the fuck did you do?” And I was like, “Dude, this is more real. I couldn’t even tell you what a fir tree looks like if I walked by one. I actually go to a par 3.”

A lot of these songs feel as close to pop music as you’ve ever written: They have distinct verses and choruses, and your voice is a lot more front and center. Was that a conscious decision in your songwriting?

From a songwriting point of view, I was set on having everything be concise and clear. I wanted to cut as much fat as possible. I wanted things to have an arc and be dynamic. Most albums are illusions of a band playing, and as we kept working, the idea of the songs existing in a live environment became really important to me. What would this feel like on a stage? We wanted to make it feel as unproduced as possible, trying to make it sound like a band in a room.

What I keep having to re-learn every record, but more so this one, is how to be a singer. If you’re a guitar player, and you’re coming in to do your solo, you know to dig in. With singing, it doesn’t come as natural to me. Some of these songs, the choruses would happen and I was still singing it lower, more chill. And I’d be like, “Why isn’t this song taking off?” So, you know, we’d put another guitar on. But once I pushed it, or sang an octave up, that really helped the song explode. When I noticed that, I was like, “I have to push the song. The vocal—the person—has to define it. Harmonies were something I never really embraced until this record.

The title track immediately felt like a breakthrough. Can you talk about the process of writing it?

My baby Bruce was a month old, maybe, and I have a voice memo of myself just playing the chords. That night, I went down to my music room and sang the song with those chords but I didn’t have anything else. It was 10 verses or something, just improvising. I sent it to [keyboardist] Robbie [Bennett], like, “Here’s something I’ve been working on.” And I’ll never forget it: I was going to buy a roasting pan for Thanksgiving, and I was getting out of my car at the Grove in L.A. to go into Sur La Table or something, and an email from Robbie pops up. I was walking into this place, and he had put on the riff of all riffs—he had worked it all out in his basement. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It sounded so perfect. Immediately, I saw the song.

We worked on it a little bit over email, but the song really came together because of a drum sound. There was a sound in the room, and we just went with it. After all those sessions, I came up with the chorus at home. I didn’t have that many lyrics, but I did have that: “We’re all just walking through the darkness on our own.” [Guest vocalists] Lucius were working with Shawn on their new record, and we decided to have them over to sing on it. They’re such great singers, and they have so much spirit. They realized the bigness of the song before I did.

I was curious how your habits as a listener have changed over the years.

When we go on tour, we always soak it up and get inspired. On tour, everyone is buying records every day between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. So then by 3 p.m., you have a stack backstage and you’re just listening constantly. That’s a really intense time of consuming and learning for all of us. My bandmates have such a ridiculous knowledge of music that I don’t necessarily have. I’m not a deep record collector, so I learn so much from guys like that. That’s a really fruitful time that we haven’t had in a while.

I go through spells where I don’t listen to anything—and I feel bad about it. But I sometimes get so deep in my own stuff. I almost don’t want to be inspired because it will derail me or make me second-guess something. I’m just not interested in consuming at that time. But having a kid now, it’s amazing to just put on anything and see him react. I remember playing Harmonia for him in the car the other day. He likes to sit in the car as if he’s driving, and I put on Harmonia and he was the happiest I’ve ever seen him—fake-driving to Harmonia.

There are a lot of references to your own father, and your childhood in general, on this record. Was that a result of starting your own family?

It’s something that keeps popping up. I don’t know if I’m able to explain it. You want to write from a real place. I might not be skilled enough to write it in a way that’s so elegant. I write by referencing things, and letting the music and the mood of the music take you there. I want to write about having a child, and being a dad, and seeing things in my own life and my own dad… I don’t know what I’m trying to say other than the fact that I’m also trying to uncover something here.

What is your relationship with your dad like?

My dad is basically 90 years old, and he didn’t really get into rock music until he was like 86. So now he’s the band’s biggest fan—and he’s the star of the band, really. Everyone loves my dad, and he just loves the community around the band. He’s a very gregarious guy. He’s come on the road with us. He’s come to Europe. And this is all pretty much starting in his late 80s. He just flew out here to L.A. when the band was rehearsing: He wanted to see the guys and he wanted to see Bruce. It’s an inspiring thing. It wasn’t like the 1950s where rock and roll tore us apart or anything, but when I was growing up and was so into music, it was so important to me that I had a guitar. I couldn’t explain why I wanted a guitar so bad, or why I was obsessed with music. I don’t think he understood, really. So having built this family with our band, to have my dad welcomed into that means a lot in the context of our music.