Lost in the Dream - The War On Drugs

These sure are indecisive times. Eight months in and not one publication seems able to point out 2014's future classics. It doesn't help that most major (highest selling) artists, who critics love to turn to, have been dormant these few months. Which is why Lost in the Dream, an album practically born a sleeper hit, has become the unofficial album of the year; if you're listening to it with the hype in mind - and that's basically the reason we're all listening right? - then that title works against the album more than for it.

The problem with 'album of the year' is that it means, supposedly, this album should answer 2014. Should answer the current state we all find ourselves in. Should answer all our other shitty music. Should be good enough to answer something. Which, regardless of its quality, it doesn't: handing this album out to all your friends in hope of igniting some shared realization is like giving them all printouts of the failed love letters you wrote in high school so they can see how much you've matured. Lost in the Dream looks inward, makes no reaction to any other music, holds no answers - will, if anything, give you more questions.

Apparently inspired by a breakup, the tracks here are long, slushy, barren landscapes. The tracks - hardly distinguishable from each other - are smooth running mood pieces. A dreary mood. Picking out individual tracks just highlights how featureless each one is; best listened all at once, and more than once. The album's greatest asset is the way each individual element of the band blurs together, Adam Granduciel's vocals sound calm, and rendered hollow under the production they don't intrude on the guitars at all, meaning you never feel like your missing anything by not paying attention to the lyrics. One element not here - on all previous TWoD albums - is Kurt Vile's electric guitar, before he left to go solo. It could be argued this is why the album feels more like it's playing with itself than the audience, although you could also counter that it gives the tracks a flowing simplicity. I was more impressed with Lost in the Dream than moved.

There are moments of real fire, though: the first two tracks, the only two I'd be able to pick out of a line-up, are far more lively than the rest. In Red Eye, Granduciel screams and the guitars explode into motion. There's even a pop hook. So maybe this really is an album of the times: a band showing they've got power and talent to burn, only so numbed out they refuse to use any.