I first discovered The War on Drugs in the summer of 2014, shortly after their album ‘Lost in the Dream’ came out. I was scrolling through Metacritic and noticed this album from a band with a funny name was getting some great reviews so I gave them a listen. Little did I know, I was going to listen to that album over and over again in the months and years to come. The War on Drugs is one of my favorite bands and I still listen to ‘Lost in the Dream’ constantly—in my opinion, there are few albums that pair better with driving in the heat of summer with the windows down. Hence when they released a new album, ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’, I had to review it.
‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’ is a very cohesive album with a consistent tone and style that marks most every song on the album, a musical fingerprint of sorts. The only issue here is that this sound starts to get old after a while. Songs like “I Don’t Wanna Wait” sound derivative of early 90’s pop while “Victim” gives me strong Phil Collins vibes. The thing is The War on Drugs doesn’t really need to resort to this and it’s not a particularly interesting sound. I found myself missing some of his amazing singing guitar solos like in ‘A Deeper Understanding’, their previous album.
There are some good songs on here, don’t get me wrong. “Living Proof” take a slow melancholic tune led by single plinks of the piano into soaring heights with a great solo near the end. “Harmonia’s Dream” is also a great rollicking song with the only knock on it being how Adam’s vocals easily fall back into the mix. In fact, the back half of the album has a few gems including the last two: “Rings Around My Father’s Eyes” and “Occasional Rain”. After the derivative songs from earlier, it felt great to end on such an authentic note.
Overall, I do feel that this is one of The War on Drugs’ weaker albums. That’s not to say it’s a bad album but only that it does not hold up to their earlier work. I do have the sneaking suspicion that this one may get better with age but for right now, I think I’ll settle for adding a few songs from this album to a playlist or two and leave it there.