The War On Drugs - I Don’t Live Here Anymore
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On October 29, 2021, "The War On Drugs" released "I Don’t Live Here Anymore", their fifth studio album.
Four years after "A Deeper Understanding", the band invites us back into the car, with the window slightly open and the road carrying our thoughts away. This time, though, there is also a desire to get home beneath the shimmering guitars and synthesizers. It remains a perfect album for an autumn morning, its soft light illuminating questions about growing older, changing, and accepting the people we have become.
Singer, guitarist, and songwriter Adam Granduciel guides the journey. His sound connects the American horizons of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty with hypnotic repetition, folk, and psychedelia. Listening can feel like riding in Doc Brown and Marty McFly’s DeLorean while the radio picks up stations from the 1970s and 1980s simultaneously. Yet the deeper we listen, the more those comparisons give way to the band’s own identity. Guitars stretch towards the horizon, the rhythm keeps rolling, and Granduciel’s weathered voice never quite settles.
The musicians around him deserve their share of the credit. Granduciel leads the project, but Dave Hartley’s bass, Robbie Bennett’s keyboards, and Anthony LaMarca’s playing and arrangement ideas are essential. Early sessions began in March 2018, while the band was still promoting its previous album, with Granduciel, Hartley, and LaMarca at Outlier Inn in upstate New York. That developed into roughly three years of work across seven studios, co-produced by Granduciel and Shawn Everett, with songs repeatedly rewritten and rebuilt.
The birth of his son in July 2019, followed by the pandemic, changed Granduciel’s working routine and sense of time. Lockdown did not start the project, and remote recording was initially frustrating. Eventually, working separately gave the musicians room to explore their parts and send back fully considered ideas. Renewed sessions with Everett brought fresh momentum. An extraordinary amount of work went into music that seems to breathe so naturally.
"Living Proof" opens gently, with acoustic guitar, piano, and a comparatively exposed vocal. Rather than immediately accelerating into the band’s familiar pulse, it allows uncertainty to linger. Its words circle movement, change, and the difficulty of returning to somewhere that has changed without us, while electric guitar answers in long, patient phrases. It is a lovely reminder of how affecting this band can be with space left in the arrangement.
"Harmonia’s Dream" opens up the landscape. Bennett’s synthesizer line and the persistent beat sustain a sense of forward motion as guitars gather overhead. The influence of German band "Harmonia" emerges through the repetition, but the emotional temperature is warm and expansive. For us, the tension between that momentum and the searching vocal makes this one of the album’s finest moments. The track also earned a Best Rock Song nomination at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
"Change" continues that uncertainty, its melody and rhythm moving ahead while the words struggle to make the desired change. "I Don’t Wanna Wait" introduces darker electronics and a processed vocal, while "Victim" tightens the atmosphere with its insistent groove and stinging guitars. There is a distant echo of Peter Gabriel’s rhythmic world here. Together, these tracks show how much the description of the album as one long song overlooks. The pulse connects them, but the emotional temperature keeps shifting.
The title track, "I Don’t Live Here Anymore", is the album’s open heart. Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of "Lucius" bring breadth and radiance to the chorus, their voices meeting Granduciel’s rougher delivery with an almost physical impact. References to Bob Dylan and "Desolation Row" connect musical memory with the desire for rebirth. It is a song made for singing together that still touches something deeply private. Its 1980s glow beautifully serves the tension between missing who we were and needing to move forward.
One of our highlights arrives with "Old Skin". The restrained opening gives its words room to resonate before the drums enter and transform the scale of everything. That release feels like an attempt to shake accumulated weight from tired shoulders. "Wasted" follows with more direct, rough-edged energy, while "Rings Around My Father’s Eyes" returns to tenderness. The sequence gives the album’s second half both momentum and breathing room.
"Occasional Rain" closes the journey without demanding another thunderous climax. Clear guitars and an easy flow suggest a tentative acceptance. After all the distance, memories, and effort to change, we hear someone beginning to find a place to stand. Its hope feels modest, everyday, and achievable, which makes it especially moving.
The sleeve fits that spirit, too. A photograph from the recording period captures Granduciel walking through snow towards the studio, carrying coffee and a guitar. Its unceremonious appearance brings us back to the long working days and patient searching behind this enormous sound.
Released through Atlantic Records, the album received a deluxe edition in September 2022 with "Oceans of Darkness" and "Slow Ghost". Several songs later took on broader, freer forms on 2024’s "Live Drugs Again". Those performances underline how naturally this meticulously assembled music can grow through an encounter with an audience.
Some songs surprise more than others, and the polish may put a little distance between the band and listeners who prefer its frayed edges. Still, "I Don’t Live Here Anymore" benefits from focused writing and the balance between continual motion and intimacy. We return for its ability to give sound to the thoughts that arrive when the road is open, the season is changing, and the destination remains uncertain.
On September 9, 2026, the band released the single "Who’s That", its first new studio recording since 2022. Adam Granduciel wrote and produced the song at his Burbank studio, with Anthony LaMarca on drums and Dave Hartley on bass.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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