The War on Drugs | Lost in the DreamEmpty Bottle Evenings

Mar272016March 27, 2016March 27, 2016No Commentby Bake

The War on Drugs | Lost in the Dream

Posted in Music

Back in 2014 when Ryan Adam’s self titled album came out I gushed about it not sounding like anything in two decades. After listening to The War of Drug’s Lost in the Dream again recently, I would like to amend that statement to read “it sounds like nothing else recorded in two decades, except this album that came out only 6 months before it”. Yeah, I don’t know how I whiffed on that one. And it’s not like I didn’t listen to Lost in the Dream, in fact I ranked it my 9th favorite album of 2014. Still I didn’t really link the two. The War on Drugs was still too spacey and dreamy to see it as an influence on Adams, certainly more similar to the work of former bandmate Kurt Vile or the shoegazing bands of the late ’80s and ’90s.

Still after randomly obsessing over “Red Eyes” this past week, I can’t help but be annoyed with myself for missing the connection. This is easily the least trippy and distorted song on the album, and one that I liked at the time but now love unhealthily. And I hear it now and think how it could easily be a Ryan Adams song. Especially on the self titled disc. It seems that if Adams wasn’t ripping off this song’s style they were coming from the same place of influence. Apparently, this blend of shoegaze and classic rock was dubbed by actual music critics as “bossgaze”; combining shoegaze with Bruce Springsteen of course. Which, as odd as that is, somehow puts things all together for me. Adams is too grounded in pop music to make a shoegaze album but sounds a lot like he’s borrowed from Springsteen, Tom Petty, and the like for years. There is also the influence of The Replacements & Husker Du (that come out more obviously later on his 1984 EP), but now it’s impossible for me to hear Lost in the Dream and ignore it’s influence on Ryan Adams. I still love that album, but I feel I need to acknowledge my failure to give credit where credit is due.

Also, in case there was any confusion on whether Adams was inspired by the War on Drugs, there’s this: