War on Drugs soars after band stops striving for perfection
The War on Drugs’ dreamy, synthwashed heartland rock is so vast, so splendid, that the songs practically beg to be heard in concert, blasting from massive speakers.
The acclaimed Philadelphia band’s albums are also so meticulously crafted — particularly last fall’s “A Deeper Understanding,” the most recent recipient of the best rock album Grammy — that live, there’s a risk the songs could be a letdown.
At a sold-out Riverside Theater Sunday, the six-piece band expertly replicated its recordings — although that wasn’t the finest aspect of the two-hour show.
From a technical standpoint, “Red Eyes” sounded as remarkable as one could hope Sunday, with frontman Adam Granduciel singing, “Well, we won’t get lost inside of it again,” and unleashing the same liberated “woo” from the recording, atop Robbie Bennett’s wide-eyed ‘80s synthesizers and Charlie Hall’s driving drums.
And “An Ocean in Between the Waves” — like “Eyes,” a standout from the band’s mainstream breakthrough, “Lost in the Dream,” in 2014 — was paired with a dazzling light display, with beams from spotlights arranged behind the band in a semicircle intersecting and flowing from stage right to stage left, moving faster and faster under frantic strobes as the song reached its climax.
Grand, glossy moments like these were the concert equivalent of the War on Drugs’ studio perfectionism. They were admirable, impressive — but not always electrifying. “Red Eyes” should have come across as a euphoric revelation Sunday, but looking out over the packed lower balcony, I spotted only one woman up on her feet dancing with abandon.
It was when the band let loose that Sunday’s concert really soared. As on the albums, where he plays multiple instruments, Granduciel was the center of attention and primary creative force Sunday, leading the band to new terrain with meatier, knottier guitar solos, as near the end of “Understanding” single “Pain,” and whipping out a harmonica for “Eyes to the Wind.” Jon Natchez complimented Granduciel for the latter with his own warm sax solo, and Hall — tightly restrained for most of the night’s 15
songs — played with such force on “Nothing to Find” the tom drum in his kit shook violently.
It was all a precursor to the concert’s highlight, “Under the Pressure.” The band brought the song to a rumbling simmer, with Granduciel fanning a jamming Natchez with a Brewers jersey, before Hall broke the tension with a mighty wallop on the drums. Now, instead of the lone woman on her feet, there were scores of people dancing with abandon in the balcony — even a dude without his shirt.
This was a totally different, and welcome, side of The War on Drugs: loud, messy, wild, and carefree. For that song, the band stopped aspiring for perfection — and as a result, created a perfect moment.