#395 The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient

Pitch'd! The day they stop being so consistently good at picking BNM albums is the day I'll stop looking.

It's a solid, curiously absorbing album, considering how boring it is. The songs are mushy and repetitive, like a washed out, echo-chamber Wilco got a Scottish Bob Dylan to sing some songs for them while they laid out relentless motorik*.

The real strength of this album, though, is its overall pacing and composition, which gives it that tricky boring/absorbing quality. The (long, but just barely not too long) Your Love is Calling My Name is followed by a pretty ambient palette cleanser, and another ambient diversion follows just when it's needed a few tracks later, and another a few tracks later still. These contrasts left me feeling restless, but pulled me back again and again to the center.

It also helps that subtle shifts nudge the dense, mushy sound hither and tither, from the U2 anthem Come to the City to the Springsteen-via-Arcade-Fire pulse of Baby Missiles. The beats are constant, but the swooping tone of the sentiment winds new paths through the swamps, climaxing in the brilliantly crisp Blackwater, which sheds just enough of the album's reverb muck to emerge triumphant without betraying the road it closes.

I don't see this as a repeat listen for me, but I admire the way it overcomes its apparent shortcomings with grace. Could be a grower 3.5/5

You might like this if: You're feeling patient and wistful, and want a ghostly echo for a companion for 45 minutes or so.

*New my blog drinking game: do a shot every time I mention Krautrock or Motorik. Ever since I first encountered the sound I kind of started seeing it everywhere. But it totally applies here, especially on the doggedly churning Your Love is Calling My Name.