AND APPARENTLY THEY STILL DON’T KNOW HOW TO MAKE A BAD SONG
I have to admit something before we get into this: I was more than two years late discovering The War on Drugs.
Two years.
That’s an embarrassing amount of time to spend walking around on this planet without realizing what was happening.
Some bands have a handful of great songs, maybe one monster track that makes you understand why everyone keeps talking about them. Then there are bands like The War on Drugs, where you eventually realize the entire damn catalog is loaded.
You can put one of their albums on, hit play and walk away. You don’t have to hover over the skip button like you’re defusing a bomb. You don’t have to suddenly decide that track seven is “a little slow.” You don’t have to cherry-pick the hits and pretend the rest is homework.
You just let the album play.
And that’s becoming a rare thing.
Now The War on Drugs have returned with “Who’s That,” their first new song in four years, and it sounds like exactly the kind of announcement you’d expect from a band that has spent years perfecting the art of turning atmospheric rock into something that feels both enormous and deeply personal.
The new song arrives as the band’s first fresh music since their 2022 release “Oceans of Darkness,” following their 2021 studio album I Don’t Live Here Anymore. And while the band has hardly disappeared from the live-music world during that time, they’ve been relatively quiet on the new-record front. Until now.
“Who’s That” was written and produced by frontman Adam Granduciel, who apparently decided that a quick bit of songwriting between morning coffee and getting the kids where they needed to go was sufficient time to create something worth releasing to the world.
Most people can’t answer an email before their second coffee.
Granduciel apparently writes War on Drugs songs.
Humanity is wildly uneven.
The song was inspired by the struggle to maintain self-worth while dealing with the things that can get inside your head and stay there. Granduciel has described it as being about trying to love yourself despite anxiety, depression and self-doubt, particularly when those things interfere with the life you’re trying to build.
That’s a pretty heavy subject, but The War on Drugs have always been particularly good at taking complicated emotions and wrapping them inside music that feels expansive rather than suffocating.
“Who’s That” comes with a music video directed by Max Flick, giving the song a visual companion while the band heads back onto the road for a series of festival appearances through the fall, including Austin City Limits.
And naturally, now I’m thinking about the concert I missed.
THE LAS VEGAS SHOW I STILL HAVEN’T FORGIVEN MYSELF FOR MISSING
One of my biggest War on Drugs regrets happened in Las Vegas.
I was walking through an area of the city when I saw their name on a marquee.
THE WAR ON DRUGS.
TONIGHT ONLY.
My first reaction was basically, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Then I looked at my watch.
I had only a few hours before I needed to get to the airport.
There was no realistic way to make the show and get where I needed to be afterward, which meant I had to keep walking.
That one still hurts.
And no, this wasn’t the time I blacked out and somehow lost an entire day in Las Vegas. That’s a completely different story involving the kind of decision-making that makes you understand why casinos are so profitable.
This was simply terrible timing.
I had finally discovered The War on Drugs, finally understood what all the fuss was about, and then Las Vegas casually put them directly in front of me and said, “Sorry, you’re leaving.”
I’ve never really gotten over it.
So here’s hoping they eventually decide that Central Florida deserves a proper War on Drugs stop. Daytona Beach, Orlando, Tampa, somewhere in that general region. We’re not picky. Well, we are picky about the band being good, but that’s already handled.
THE BAND HAS THE HARDWARE TO BACK IT UP
The War on Drugs aren’t simply one of those bands music nerds insist you need to hear while everyone else politely nods.
The accolades are real.
The band’s 2017 album ** A Deeper Understanding ** won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album at the 2018 ceremony. The album also became their first Top 10 album on the Billboard 200, eventually reaching No. 10.
Then came I Don’t Live Here Anymore in 2021, which continued the band’s evolution without sacrificing what made them special in the first place. The album earned another Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album, while the title track featuring Lucius received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance.
The band has also earned multiple nominations at the Grammys throughout its career, with Granduciel’s songwriting and production becoming just as important to the group’s identity as the sprawling guitar work and atmospheric arrangements.
And while The War on Drugs haven’t been a band built around chasing No. 1 singles, they’ve managed something considerably more difficult: building a catalog people actually want to listen to from beginning to end.
That’s worth more than a pile of trophies in my book.
FROM LOST IN THE DREAM TO WHEREVER THEY’RE GOING NEXT
For anyone who discovered the band through “Red Eyes,” “Under the Pressure,” “Pain,” “Thinking of a Place” or “I Don’t Live Here Anymore,” the evolution is pretty fascinating.
Lost in the Dream turned The War on Drugs into a major critical force in 2014. A Deeper Understanding pushed them further into the mainstream without sanding off the strange edges. I Don’t Live Here Anymore continued that progression, sounding like a band that had figured out exactly how to make enormous music without losing the intimacy underneath it.
Granduciel’s guitar playing and production have always been central to that sound. There’s a certain cinematic quality to The War on Drugs that makes their records feel like they belong somewhere between an empty highway at midnight, a late-night drive with the windows down and the credits rolling on a movie about somebody finally figuring their life out.
It’s rock music, but it’s also atmosphere.
It’s nostalgic without being trapped in the past.
And it’s polished without feeling sterile.
That’s a difficult trick to pull off.
SO WHAT COMES NEXT?
That’s the part we don’t know yet.
“Who’s That” is the band’s first new music in four years, but there has been no full announcement of a new studio album accompanying the single. For now, fans get the song, the video and a run of live appearances.
For those of us hoping for a new album and, more importantly, a tour that eventually makes its way through Florida, that means we’re going to have to wait.
Waiting is terrible.
Waiting for music is particularly terrible because musicians apparently have no respect for our completely reasonable demand that they release exactly what we want exactly when we want it.
Still, if “Who’s That” is any indication, the wait may be worth it.
And for anyone who hasn’t gotten around to discovering The War on Drugs yet, I have one piece of advice based on my own spectacularly late arrival:
Don’t wait two years.
Put on an album.
Hit play.
Leave it alone.
For once, you don’t need to skip anything.
FIND THE NEXT SHOW BEFORE YOU MISS IT
This is exactly why we built the Static Live Music Calendar App.
Static Live covers live music across Florida’s East Coast, including Daytona Beach, New Smyrna Beach, Ormond Beach, Flagler Beach and surrounding communities, while we’re working toward expanding into additional cities.
Because discovering your favorite band two years late is bad enough.
Discovering they played 20 minutes from you last night is worse.
The Static Live Music Calendar App is available for iOS and Android, helping music fans find concerts, events and venues without having to rely on luck, word of mouth or some guy at the bar who swears he “knows what’s happening.”
Download Static Live:
https://staticlive.app/
