You need this record now and you’ll need it for the rest of your life

It is about 70 degrees and you’re on the road, eager to get to anywhere but where you are now. Fueled by nervous energy, just enough to keep you going but steady enough to keep you in your seat; the sun every so often breaks through the clouds and you are happy. But then a breeze sneaks through the cracked window and goosebumps remind you that you are all alone. On their third album, Philadelphia’s psych rockers, The War On Drugs, capture this lonesome essence through fluid Americana melodies tinted with passed-out psychedelia and pulsing with that last bit of whatever you’re holding on to. Opening with “Under The Pressure”, nine minutes of engine revving gently, piano and percussion that set the pace for frontman Adam Granduciel’s breathless dialogue, the past-their prime rockers prove some get better with age (with experience, heartbreak, and long journeys on the road to contemplate it all). War On Drugs’ guitar style finds no rhymes in the world of music it lives in today. This allows their classic rock roots that meld with thinly veiled distortion, country braided with soft sax and psych swirls of everything else, to stand out strong. Granduciel is shouting over the car speakers on full volume, driving fast and the wind repetitively whips through the windows, so when he shouts alone, what the car beside him hears is dimmed but inside is bursting with agony, with emotion that somehow also has the endurance to push forth through flawless guitar solos until all that is left is amber country ballads, a few minutes to refuel the tank and set forth again. This album is exactly what you need right now because it is timeless.

RIYL: Kurt Vile, Neil Young, Sonic Youth, Bob Dylan, Eels, Nightlands
Recommended: 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10