"The 3rd album from the War on Drugs is a dreamy reshaping of communal classic rock memory – a deep, languorous dive into Lake Mojo, painstakingly written and produced by Adam Granduciel, the Philadelphia-based band’s one-man rock tsar. But its real power comes from being a bruised, state-of-the-heart record, one that more than lived up to the promise of 2011’s well received but commercially static Slave Ambient.
Lost in the Dream was released in March 2014 to a cascade of positive reviews, and there was some extracurricular sport to be had in comparing how various critics chose to shorthand Granduciel’s ongoing marriage of mythic, open-road Americana and unwavering Motorik rhythms (“Neu! covering Dancing in the Dark” was how this paper chose to put it). But for every impassioned touchstone cited – Springsteen, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, those Dylanesque vocal inflections – there were other, notionally less cool comparisons. Within the gauzy textures of Lost in the Dream, some detected the ghost of Dire Straits, or the grizzled night moves of Bob Seger. Turns out that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Opening track Under the Pressure may be built around a strident piano figure and single-minded, I-drove-all-night drums but it eventually surrenders almost half its running time to phasing atmospherics. These longueurs, sunk like depth charges throughout the album, are important. Like the pause of an airlock cycling, they allow the listener to acclimatise to Granduciel’s wounded headspace. Broken hearts are worn on sleeves – he sings unironically about travelling down a dark road on Eyes to the Wind, one of the record’s most immediate entry points, beautifully upholstered by gorgeous slide guitar. It comes at the midway point of the record, when flickers of optimism begin to creep in, even if the overwhelming sense is of a soul wrestling with bone-deep anguish...
In a year in which some of the very best albums have seemed almost terrified of repeating themselves, knitting together disparate influences like garish loom band bracelets, Lost in the Dream is defiantly whole cloth. It’s an hour-long flotation tank, with Granduciel’s evocative, spacey production folding in sympathetic piano, harmonica, bass clarinet and some righteous saxophone skronk. Beautifully textured, it feels like a continuation of the confessionalism of Bon Iver, with an echo of early Arcade Fire’s oddball uplift.
“Balearic Springsteen” is not, sadly, the defining sound of 2014, but while Lost in the Dream might not be the sort of album that could only have been made this year, the fact that it has placed so highly in this poll means it’s a beautifully crafted burrower – the sort of intimate, empathetic record that really gets under the skin. What was clearly punishing for Granduciel has become cathartic for the rest of us. “Love’s the key to the things that we see,” he sings on the title track, a sentiment that may not unlock the entire album but at least nudges the listener in the right direction." - The Guardian
Black Vinyl Pressing
Tracklisting
Side A:
1. Under The Pressure
2. Red Eyes
3. Suffering
Side B:
1. An Ocean In Between The Waves
2. Disappearing
Side C:
1. Eyes To The Wind
2. The Haunting Idle
3. Burning
Side D:
1. Lost In The Dream
2. In Reverse
