Rock was still staggering along in 2014, but anybody could’ve taken its pitiful mortally wounded carcass out back and put a bullet in its head without too many people noticing. The party was over, unfortunately, and the last wave of culturally significant guitar music – the Arcade Fire albums, the National’s imperial-era trilogy, all of that godawful folk rock revival stuff – was already getting smaller in the rearview mirror. Not much was to follow. And it was in this rather depressing context, apparently, that Adam Granduciel of the War on Drugs just thought “fuck it” and decided to regurgitate his Desert Island Discs into a new record, maybe as a conscious tribute to half a century of rock, or maybe just hoping that no one would notice.
You could definitely devise a drinking game to go along with listening to Lost in the Dream. Frenetic post punk bass and ghostly New Order-style synths? One shot of rum. Excessively long, almost proggy, repetitive but hypnotic song structures, like Disintegration-era Cure? One shot of Jägermeister. Psychedelic haziness with clean, occasionally piercing guitars, like Pink Floyd on The Division Bell? A shot of Vodka, maybe two when it starts to flirt dangerously with mid-90s Marillion. Nasal Bob Dylan crooning over breezily wistful alt-country? One shot of Jack Daniels. Manic Springsteenean, perhaps even Unforgettable Fire or New Gold Dream-style synth rock? A gin and tonic.
You’d be pissed after five minutes – which, certainly, would be no impediment to making sense of the lyrics, because all that’s on offer here is a succession of fragmented, nebulous, not even particularly suggestive snippets that barely work even on a subconscious level, unless I’m very much mistaken. The closest the lyrics get to intelligibility are the oblique references to desolate and haunted country landscapes; deserted yards, icy rivers, a “black moon rising”, and a “train in reverse down a dark
road” – which may or may not be an unfortunate reference to anal sex. Obviously, Adam is going for subliminal vibe over considered statement making, which is fine – as the title suggests, listening to this album is supposed to be a hazy, dream-like experience. But this could definitely have been done with a bit more elan, as Pink Floyd themselves proved on The Division Bell.
Overall, then, Lost in the Dream is unashamedly, almost celebratorily derivative; the lyrics are largely meaningless; and its primary cultural legacy is as a kind of grim tombstone to rock, 1966 – 2014. But is it bad? Of course not – if anything, it’s a worthy sendoff to an ailing cultural movement. The music is evocative, frequently quite beautiful, at times almost entrancing; the influences are worn ostentatiously and they’re varied, but the overall sound is somehow cohesive, which is an achievement in itself.
Needless to say, there are weaker moments where the album starts to drag – the seven minute long “An Ocean Between the Waves”, the forgettable closing track “In Reverse” – and even quite brilliant songs like “Under the Pressure” and “Disappearing” could have been trimmed a bit. Overall, though, it’s great – a welcome throwback to Shoegaze, an agreeable slice of updated post-punk, ideal music for the hospital room scene as rock’s life support was finally switched off in the mid-2010s. May it rust in peace.
Overall rating: * * * *
Standout track: “Red Eyes”