ALBUM OF THE WEEK

The War On Drugs A Deeper Understanding Atlantic, out Friday

Adam Granduciel, strategistin-chief behind Philadelphia’s The War On Drugs, works in a field we might call ambient Americana. Imagine the music of Bruce Springsteen, bornagain Bob Dylan and Dire Straits administered with a medium-strength sedative, filtered through dreamy indierock atmospherics and set to a motoric pulse. Repeat ad nauseum. Which is to say the band’s major-label debut, following up the acclaimed Lost In The Dream, drifts appealingly but frustratingly. Its 11-minute centrepiece Thinking Of A Place emits a gauzy grandeur, like a drunken dream of Eighties stadium rock, and is the entire album in microcosm, while Nothing To Find is Springsteen’s Glory Days in slo-mo, stripped of its amused ruefulness. In small doses these excursions are seductive but over 10 tracks, the unvarying pace, rhythm and mood become enervating.