Can the War on Drugs Find Peace at Last? – Vanity Fair

One of the last things Adam Granduciel does before finishing an album is rewrite any lyrics that, as he puts it during a recent Zoom interview, might make you gag.

The singer, guitarist, and songwriter behind the War on Drugs first began working on his upcoming release, I Dont Live Here Anymore, at the beginning of 2018. He estimates that his band put in roughly 20 multiday studio sessions, and thats not counting the time he spent alone with producer and engineer Shawn Everett, just sitting at Sound City for four weeks with masks on, going crazy, having fun. Everett, for his part, says he devoted thousands of hours to the album.

But not until the final week before mastering did Granduciel go through all 10 songs in search of bits of lyrics that felt off. Whenever he caught one, hed have Everett loop that section of the track while Granduciel listened through headphones, racking his brain for something better. Well do this for an hour for one five-second area, Granduciel says. And hes probably just going insane, but I feel like every time I end up getting something thats kind of like the crux of the song.

Case in point: While obsessing over the albums third track, Change, Granduciel hit upon the lyric, But its so damn hard to make the change. Before that it was just some line about raining and nighttime, he says. Now its a prism for understanding the whole album, which, he says, is all about growing up, getting older, but also growing out of yourself and into something new. The end of something, the beginning of something else.

I Dont Live Here Anymore, due out on October 29, may well be the end of something for Granduciel and the War on Drugs. Its the second record of a two-album deal with Atlantic Records. If everything goes according to plan, it will also be the capstone to a career-defining run that began with 2014s Lost in the Dream and continued with 2017s A Deeper Understanding, which won the Grammy for best rock album. Very few people get to have more than one unanimously lauded record, says A&R veteran Steve Ralbovsky, who signed the War on Drugs to Atlantic. This guys on two in a row. If were going for the trifecta here, thats some crazy history.

It could also be the beginning of something new. A decade ago the War on Drugs was an indie-rock darling, exalted by rock writers and cherished by the kind of listeners (like me!) who dont trust stirring anthems unless theyre wrapped in some type of quasi-alienating fuzz. Today, the band has achieved more than 99% of its peers: critical acclaim, major-label support, and enough loyal fans to headline festivals and fill Madison Square Garden.

Granduciel himself is living proof that while it may be so damn hard to change, it isnt impossible. Once a hard-partying stalwart of the Philadelphia indie-rock scene, he experienced a bad breakup, depression, and panic attacks in the wake of his 2011 breakthrough album, Slave Ambient. All that pain shines through in the exquisite Lost in the Dream, but getting there wasnt easy. Bassist Dave Hartley, whos been with the War on Drugs from the beginning, once told a reporter that Granduciel has to self-immolate a little bit to feel like hes created something true to himself.

Clean living, therapy, and success seem to have softened Granduciels edges, even if they havent sped up his creative process. Today, he enjoys a rock stars life in L.A., complete with tabloid-documented coffee runs with his television-star partner and their toddler. And his new music has something surprising: a glimmer of joy. As Pitchforks Ryan Dombal wrote in a review of the new albums title track, Granduciels Springsteen fandom is well documented (his young son is named Bruce), but hes never made a song as welcoming as Hungry Heart until now.

Is it possible that, nearly a decade and a half into his recording career, Adam Granduciel is...happy?

Hes not so sure. Youre not going to see me on some mountainous overlook where if I take one wrong step, Ill fall 400 feet, like, without a shirt on, you know, gazing at the sky or something, he says, a sly smile on his face. I dont know why I equate that with happiness, but you know what I mean.

Adam Granofsky grew up in Massachusetts, not New Jersey, but his childhood still had some of the hallmarks of a Springsteen song. His father owned a womens clothing store in the North End of Boston. He sold irregulars, as they call them, Granduciel says. Hed buy a box of jeans for $2 and sell them for $9. That was the name of the game. Granduciel remembers riding his bike around Boston with the son of his fathers employee. Nowadays, I wouldnt let my eight-year-old kid ride his bike around Boston, but it was a different time.

When Granduciel was in his early teens, the store fell victim to the Big Dig, the controversial, endlessly delayed, wildly expensive project to replace I-93 and extend I-90 in order to reduce heavy traffic. It was just a clusterfuck, Granduciel says. So eventually, a lot of stores shut down one by one. Today, the old neighborhood has been gentrified almost beyond recognition.

Granduciels father, who turns 90 this year, is a big War on Drugs fan, but he cant claim credit for instilling in his son an abiding love for 60s and 70s rock and roll. He was a little older, so in his car I would hear classical music or AM radio, usually sports radio. And then my mom might play some Roy Orbison, but there was not a ton of music in the house, Granduciel says. It was his older brother who turned him on to Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and R.E.M.

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Can the War on Drugs Find Peace at Last? - Vanity Fair