The War on Drugs: A Deeper Understanding (2LP) [ATLANTIC]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set spreads the album's long, widescreen songs across four sides in a gatefold jacket. A Deeper Understanding won the Grammy for Best Rock Album and scored 81 on Metacritic.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in Canada

About the album

Adam Granduciel is the sort of perfectionist who treats a studio like a large, expensive sketchbook. For the band's first album on Atlantic he recorded between 2015 and 2017 at a long list of rooms, Electric Lady among them, layering guitars, Wurlitzer, Mellotron, harmonica and drum machines until every song shimmered like a highway at dusk. Engineer Shawn Everett mixed it, and the title nods to the Kate Bush song of the same name.

"Up All Night" opens on a pulse of LinnDrum and synth, "Pain" builds to one of Granduciel's most cathartic guitar solos, and "Holding On" gallops along like the best kind of 80s heartland rock. "Strangest Thing" is a slow-burning ballad, and "Thinking of a Place" stretches out past the ten-minute mark without ever feeling long. Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall and Dave Hartley fill out the band, and Lucius add harmonies.

Pitchfork's Mark Richardson called it a study in influence from a band that still sounds entirely like itself, and AllMusic readers voted it their No. 1 album of 2017. Granduciel reportedly kept tinkering for two years, so the least we can do is play it loud.

Also at Kops: more The War on Drugs on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Atlantic (cat# 561934-1), a reissue of the 2017 album.