Which Springsteen album does 'Lost in the Dream' by The War on Drugs resemble most?

Which Springsteen album does 'Lost in the Dream' by The War on Drugs resemble most?

go to bed, Mark

Approaching 20. My favorite part is how he posts the thread and never checks it again.

>never checks it again.
But I do.

you have an unpopular opinion. why can't you accept that?

>you have an unpopular opinion.
What opinion? I just asked a question, there's no opinion in the OP.

>why can't you accept that?
I accept all truths.

Perhaps influenced by the commercial success of the synth-pop revival of the 2010s, Adam Granduciel went for the dancefloor on Lost in the Dream. The opener, Under the Pressure, aims plainly for the dance club, despite semi-spoken Bob Dylan-ian vocals. The more atmospheric and catchy Red Eyes (and possibly catchiest of his career) harks back to Billy Idol and crosses his industrial beat and robotic delivery with Bruce Springsteen-ian pathos. The album is weighted down by songs that test one's patience: the endless litany Suffering; the pop-soul electronic ballad Disappearing (ghastly visions of a resurrection of Yazoo or of the 100th Depeche Mode album); the tedious elegy Lost in the Dream; the pensive closer In Reverse that makes even Cat Stevens look like a philosopher; or An Ocean in Between the Waves, that sounds like U2 at their most moronic fueled by a robotic techno beat and an elastic bassline, all wrapped up in romantic synth drones. It is also embarrassing how derivative songs such as Eyes to the Wind (an impeccable imitation of Tom Petty's folk-rock) and Burning (which almost plagiarizes Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark) are. This band is building a career how of photocopying those three generations of bards (Dylan, Springsteen, Petty). Anybody who thought that roots-rock of the USA was terribly provincial was just served a major proof. On the upside, there is certainly elegance and competence in the way trance-inducing pseudo-psychedelic guitar effects add a layer of meaning to simple songs, and there is certainly a great hidden contribution by pianist Robbie Bennett (Granduciel's Al Kooper?), and more intelligent use of the synthesizer. And there are certainly some great refrains (mainly Red Eyes).

Absolute Garbage!

This album is nothing but overly long song after over long song, where each song has little to no development at all. Where are the new chord progressions in each song? Or did people suddenly decide that music should just consist of one chord progression throughout a song, while the singer rambles on. I might have heard some choruses in some songs, but I am not sure.

On top of this, the songs sound like Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible" which in turn sounded like Bruce Springsteen. So, why reward an album with critical acclaim that is for 1) Not Original 2) Repetitive 3) Boring.

When the only strength of a song is its lyrics, that is a problem. The merit of music is supposed to be based on the instrumentation, and if that is good, then the lyrics can be examined to see if the song is truly great. However, it seems a lot of critics these days put lyrics first and instrumentation second. If it sounds like a tribute to classic music, then they love it. If it sounds original, some may love it, but some may not get it.

I'd take a horrible sounding original song any day over a pleasant sounding unoriginal song.

What does this have to do with my post that you quoted?

Adam Granduciel has always admired Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and he really, really wants to be like them. Who can blame him? Zimmy and the Boss are both irreducibly American, capable of writing deeply personal lyrics that nonetheless hold a mirror to the national consciousness and of breaking new ground sonically while remaining resolutely rooted in the rock n' roll tradition. So Granduciel affects Dylan's nasal whine and lilting diction at the same time that he attempts to replicate Springsteen's propulsive groove. For good measure, he conjures appropriately "epic", "American" imagery: a soldier with eyes like rings, a dream in danger of being "wasted", a "black sunrise". But Granduciel seems to have missed the fact that Dylan's messages were strengthened by his logophilia and surrealism and Springsteen's were deepened by his narrative mastery. He instead chooses to write every lyric in the first person and spew bromides like "Love’s the key to the games that we play" in an attempt to pass off anemic omphaloskepsis as vision. "I won't get lost inside it all", he promises, but it's too late.

What's the point of making musically redundant albums just rehashing old ideas in less interesting ways?

Is it just a cash grab?

Was this supposed to change the way people thought about heartland rock?

I have a hard time naming a more derivative album

Name a less original album.

I'll wait.

What's the least original album Sup Forums has ever heard?

What does Sup Forums think of this album (supremely derivative of Springsteen, Petty and Dylan) that offers nothing new to the genre of heartland rock?

Which albums would be better with more originality?

You seem confused, none of these are Springsteen albums.

...

Those are posts, not Springsteen albums, see In case English isn't your first language I could gladly recommend you some books so you can learn to read if you'd like

>Up until now The War On Drugs have been somewhat eclipsed by the achievements of former member Kurt Vile. Main man Adam Granduciel appeared in Vile’s band The Violators too. Evidently Philadelphia, where both acts reside, is a small town for those in possession of a well-tuned guitar and serious songwriting chops. However, with ‘Lost In The Dream’ – already one of 2014’s truly great records – Adam looks set to stand shoulder to long-lock-draped shoulder with Kurt as Philly’s most highly regarded musical sons. 2011’s ‘Slave Ambient’ may have been a cult success, but this follow-up is a fast-flowing gully to mainstream domination.

>The very best kind of Americana road-trip record, ‘Lost In The Dream’ makes you want to hotwire a Mustang and drive it across the States, blazing through the badlands of Nebraska, up through California’s stunning Big Sur and down through Louisiana swampland, picking up hitchhikers and spending evenings camped out near cornfields with only a bottle of whiskey and some well-thumbed Kerouac for company. It’s a record that sensitively elevates such Americana clichés and visions of the great wide open, spinning heartland rock together with sensible psych to create a sound that’s as much a Balearic Bruce Springsteen as it is Don Henley on horseback.

>Shameless in its aping of classic rock tropes – just listen to the wailing guitar solo on ‘Suffering’, the wind-in-your-hair keyboard intro to ‘Under The Pressure’ and the key-change chorus of ‘Burning’ – ‘Lost In The Dream’, like its predecessor ‘Slave Ambient’, also stomps barefaced into prog territory, with half of its 10 tracks clocking in at well over six minutes each. In the hands of a lesser artist, it could have been a total cheeseboard, a lazy lollop through some Bob Seger B-sides, but with Adam’s unpolluted, irony-free approach, his sincere love of the genres he’s aping blazes through.

>Sonically, it’s an uplifting work, despite the fact that Adam has admitted that it came out of a period of extreme depression, a messy break-up and feelings of isolation. Dialling down the Dylan-esque warble that was so present on ‘Slave Ambient’ and their 2008 debut ‘Wagonwheel Blues’, on ‘An Ocean In Between The Waves’ Adam sings crisply of personal turmoil: “I can barely see you/You’re like an ocean between the waves”. Yet the song, which betrays hints of Stevie Nicks’ more spectral contributions to the Fleetwood Mac canon, is a belting piece of turbocharged classic rock. This isn’t music for commiseration, but for celebration.

>The slow sizzle of ‘In Reverse’ also seems to offer well-snuggled melancholy rather than a gut-punching despair, as lapping waves and plaintive piano kick into a grandiose lament, Adam crooning the agony of those times “when we’re living in the moment/and losing our grasp”. Though one of the album’s more concise songs, the ramped-up synths and plush orchestration of ‘Red Eyes’ make it no less epic.

>It’s no surprise that The War On Drugs’ indie distributor, Secretly Canadian, is part of the same label group as Jagjaguwar, home to Bon Iver. Like Justin Vernon before him, with ‘Lost In The Dream’ Adam Granduciel seems to be heading for things far bigger than anyone could ever have expected. This is one War On Drugs that might just succeed.

To deduce the overarching themes of this Philadelphia band’s third album, just scan the track list, which almost reads like a cry for help, given that War on Drugs mastermind Adam Granduciel is evidently “Under the Pressure” with “Red Eyes,” “Suffering” while crossing “An Ocean in Between the Waves,” “Burning” and on the way to “Disappearing” “In Reverse.”

All of which is to say that, yeah, Lost in the Dream is less than a merry affair. Between the songs’ obsessively recurring lyrical images (pain, darkness, disappearance, broken hearts) and the real-life backstory — Granduciel reportedly split with his girlfriend in the early stages of putting the record together — it’s tempting to take this as a breakup album focused more on the Lost than the Dream.

And yet the result is anything but the downer you’d expect from all that. At the risk of sounding like one of those resiliency-of-the-human-spirit movie trailers, it’s a spectacular example of channeling personal catharsis into great art. One particularly telling little moment happens during “An Ocean in Between the Waves,” a song whose propulsive bassline will put you in mind of very fast movement over water. Granduciel notes that he’s “in my finest hour,” which leads him to wonder, “Can I be more than just a fool?” Then he answers his own question during the song’s extended instrumental outro, wordlessly speaking in tongues while cranking away on guitar. About a minute from the end, voice and strings merge, and he lets out a triumphant “WHOO!” — one of several such whoops that pop up throughout the record. In realizing just what he has achieved here, Granduciel seems to have surprised even himself.

As on Slave Ambient, War on Drugs’ landmark 2011 album (and first full-length without co-founder Kurt Vile, also absent here), Lost in the Dream features prominent contributions from other players, including bassist Dave Hartley and pianist Robbie Bennett. And while it does feel like more of a “band” effort than past efforts, the mojo here still comes from the way Granduciel puts all the pieces together. If Slave Ambient represented a breakthrough, this one is an out-and-out star-maker that should rank among the year’s best albums. Simultaneously spare and just as fully fleshed out as it needs to be, Dream is a perfect distillation of Granduciel’s wide-open claustrophobia. The sound is more expansive than ever, even as its maker’s songs seem more personal and less universal.

Granduciel’s wounded-but-still-standing yelp remains an amazingly evocative instrument, landing somewhere between Bob Dylan’s yowling sneer and the road-hog snarl of Steppenwolf’s John Kay. From track to track, his voice seems to occupy different pockets within the mix, registering as another sound effect in the overall sonic context. It’s also layered into the arrangements so cannily that you don’t even notice how wordy these songs are at first listen; it’s kind of stunning to see printed lyrics and realize just how much verbiage gets crammed in. “No one sees me when I’m out here,” he declares from deep within the swirling beats and textures of first single “Red Eyes,” and he’s not kidding about hiding in plain sight.

Mostly, Granduciel testifies about how he’s holding up under the strains of various burdens — feeling “a bit rundown here at the moment” in “Eyes to the Wind,” and “tryin’ to get some rest” in “Burning.” The plaintive minor-key flourishes of keyboards, synthesizers, and saxophone do more to set that mood than any of the lyrics, and sometimes words aren’t required at all. “The Haunting Idle,” an instrumental that serves as a breath-catcher three-quarters of the way through the running time, has a vibe similar to some of composer Thomas Newman’s film scores; Granduciel’s ambient guitar twang elevates “Suffering” and the title track.

For all the atmosphere these 10 songs carry, plenty of them qualify as anthemic, too. “Burning” chugs along like one of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A.-era synth-pop hits, and some of the vintage keyboard textures wouldn’t sound out of place on your ’80s-new-wave Pandora channel. But you can push forward while looking backward: On the album-closing “In Reverse,” Granduciel’s final utterance before another long and stately instrumental fadeout is, “I’m moving.” Keep up if you can.

Interesting.