The War on Drugs - Wagonwheel Blues

There’s something slightly anachronistic about War on Drugs debut long player, Wagonwheel Blues. It’s there in the title, recalling a Middle American cowboy simplicity; less modern reconfiguration ala Brokeback Mountain, more Dances With Wolves search for a return to a more authentic way of being. It’s also there in lead singer Adam Granduciel’s Dylan-esque croak; that very same cadence, that same hoarse affectation. And it’s there, for the most part, in the rural orchestration; a Band like swirling waltz or a more down-home Arcade Fire, who let’s not forget, for all their blogosphere credentials, are a little reactionary themselves.

That Wagonwheel Blues is released on Secretly Canadian should come as no surprise either, given said label’s continued obsession with slightly skewed AM radio rock. But just as the Secretly Canadian association aligns War on Drugs with a certain backwater aesthetic, it’s also suggestive of subtle, not immediately evident depths that unfold over time and repeated listens. And sure enough, beyond the striking similarities to Dylan, or even Springsteen in Granduciel’s voice and the grinding harmonica and county rock chug of opening track “Arms Like Boulders”, there’s an obscured muse that moves slow like nature, pushing through the cracks like nagging weeds, as insistent as that would suggest.

The allusions to the natural world are perfectly apt too. It’s hard to imagine these songs emerging from anywhere other than the grand, blank expanse of North America, evoking lost highways, lost days and a kind of undefined drive that belongs only to those that have nothing and are nowhere and are no one. It’s a somewhat clichéd impression of Middle America, but regardless of the circumstances of conception (Philadelphia, surprisingly) – which as Barthes has noted, is no true indicator of meaning anyway - there’s an undeniably rustic and rusty sound that recalls a detachment from urban ennui and as crass as it sounds, a channelling of the American Dream that rolls down highways and throughout the last fifty years of American music .

While “There Is No Urgency” is spookily reminiscent of Animal Collective in its slow motion discordance and lilting vocals, War on Drugs appear more in line with My Morning Jacket’s ability to create their own green and brown, distinctly American world, more informed by searching radio squall and crop silos than Animal Collective’s art school experimentation. The final two tracks are a perfect case in point. Closer “Barrel of Batteries” is a sweet, homespun lament made of twine, twigs and a little early morning drinking, incongruently following the ten minute-plus “Show Me The Coast” which swirls and drags and ebbs and blissfully goes nowhere but straight into the waves.

So, War on Drugs may be a little out of time, a little overly bearded, but they exist in their own fecund, slightly overgrown but perfectly conceived space. Granduciel perfectly sums up their parochialism on the aforementioned opener “Arms Like Boulders”, bellowing “chasing squirrels around your property, making sure they know that this is your kingdom”. War on Drugs may have defined their own land, built their own fences, but they’ve left the gate wide open.