The War on Drugs Wagonwheel Blues by: Ed Butler Fri:11-Jul-08 Label: Secretly Canadian Year: 2008 WB rating 82 out of 100

It’s the harmonica that does it. And it kicks in pretty early. Three seconds, in fact, into ‘Arms Like Boulders’, the first track of Wagonwheel Blues, the squalling harp announces more clearly than any elongated vowels that The War on Drugs are big Dylan fans. And it’s everywhere on this debut album, from the title which sounds like it was lifted from a Blonde on Blonde B-side, to frontman Adam Granduciel’s nasal intonations and familiarly obtuse lyrics.. And in a climate of constant revisionism and awful rehashes of sounds of yesteryear, it is, frankly, a confronting and disconcerting sensation that is elicited by such clearly displayed influences.

As such it is a gradually dawning realization that The War on Drugs are anything but cheap revisionists. Layer upon layer of diverse sounds interact, sounding like a bunch of Dylan fans who belatedly discovered the wall of sound, or a collection of new wavers who accidentally stumbled across Bringin’ it all Back Home in an anonymous thrift store in their native Philadelphia. Slowly, varied influences unveil themselves, like ‘Buenos Aires Beach’ and its quaintly distorted Velvet Underground-isms, or the shoegaze-on-opiates of the 10 minute instrumental ‘Show Me the Coast’, while the rudimentary synths and saxophone on the wonderfully aptly titled ‘There is No Urgency’, with its shuffling rhythms, and gentle tempo have the listener fondly recalling some of the 80s new wave’s finest exponents.

The list goes on: ‘A Needle in Your Eye’ is classic Springsteen with a beautifully hazy sheen (and no saxophone), and ‘Reverse the Charges’ possesses a Brian Eno-style ambience. In fact, were Wagonwheel Blues released in the days of vinyl, side two would be viewed as a four-piece suite, with 13 minutes of instrumental atmospherics, bookended by an opening burst of energy, and a brief, quaintly appealing secret track to close it out.

The constant throwbacks to musical folklore are simultaneously a crutch and an engine, propelling the band’s sound ahead of its contemporaries, delighting in peeking back while striding confidently forward. The album’s killer track, is the rollicking, up-tempo ‘Taking the Farm’. While possessing the vocals most reminiscent of Dylan, Granduciel’s inflections occasionally veering dangerously close to the wrong side of impersonation, the chiming vibrato guitars, squalling white noise in the background, and exultant woo-oo-oo’s combine to create something genuinely thrilling.

In amongst all this wildly varied noise, however, beats the heart of an honest-to-goodness rock ‘n’ roll band. The band’s dedication to this cause is as admirable as it is clearly evident. No amount of guitar pedal-induced trickery or retro-inspired digressions can detract from the rock-solid songwriting that underpins each and every track. Understanding their own limitations, creativity is restrained and muted, never overreaching and stepping into the ugly realm of pastiche.

The only real failing of the record is the inability to match the grandeur of the records inspiring it. Rarely do songs elevate themselves to truly classic status, but routinely fall mere inches short of the kind of magic that will ensure bands equivalent to themselves will similarly look to them in another 30 years. But this is indeed a minor criticism.

To express such a clear, unabashed love of traditional rock without once resorting to cheap mimicry is a relief. To have an album which, upon first listen is rooted firmly in one particular place subsequently reveal itself to be the product of myriad influences, a collection of disparate sounds blended together so well as to be truly unique, is a rare treat in these days of lazy re-creationism. So, while The War on Drugs’ backwards-looking leanings are brazenly obvious early on, the lasting impression it leaves is of freshness, individuality, and a compulsion to stand on the shoulders of giants and gaze hopefully skywards.