Lost in the Dream

Completely unnecessary

Singer reminds me of Tom Petty. The weird part is the song I was thinking the first song sounded like was "red eyes" (in this album) which is actually a WOD song and not Petty's. Enjoyed the sound, but nothing super stood out to me, some of it was very aerial and understated. 3*
Highlights: red eyes (probably the most upbeat song in this album), burning (slow start but eventually gets good)

Might make good background music for a low key party where guests don’t want their conversation interrupted. The monotonous rhythm tracks, plain vanilla vocals and heavily processed guitar and keyboards will help it fade into the backdrop.
I counted 18 musicians and 16 studio members in the Wikipedia article - for an “indie” album. Really?? With that staff I would have hoped you’d find something creative to showcase. But maybe I expect too much.
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t dislike it. But on a bucket list of must-listen albums this is a head scratcher.

Never heard of this band before, at least, not that I can recall hearing of them before... and that kind of settles that.

Not that the album is bad, it has it's merits, and I'm sure that there are plenty of people who will place this album in their top 10 all time, but those persons probably were born after 1999...

There's no point in dragging most of these songs out for so damn long.
And the singer has nothing to do with Dylan.
And stop comparing this with '80s music, the only '80s relation is the sound of the snare drum, and at times a slight The Waterboys vibe, however, just by mentioning this, I feel like I've blasphemed as The Waterboys are sooooooooooo much better than this.

2 ** for the effort

Classic. 4.5/5

I'm already familiar with The War on Drugs as a heartland indie rock band from their later singles "Holding On" and "I Don't Live Here Anymore". The group was formed by Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile in the mid-2000s, only for the latter to leave shortly after their first release. This is their third album, and wow Adam and everyone else who worked on this knocked it out of the ballpark.

Lost in a Dream is an album drenched in a blend of washed-out shoegaze and mid-80s-inspired roots rock that's intricate in its song construction. It's filled to the brim with gorgeous melodies, and several instrumental moments that resonate like the guitar solo of "An Ocean in Between the Waves", the reverb guitar sliding of "The Haunting Idle", the synth crescendo and interplay on "Burning", and the saxophone that shows up on "Under the Pressure" and "Red Eyes". Seriously, "Red Eyes" is one of those immediate smash singles from this record that I couldn't believe upon first listening.

Adam sings with a Dylan-esque delivery that maintains a balance between capturing an emotion without overselling it and holding it together on the edge of heartbreak. His vocals pair neatly with the lyrical content, where after a year of nonstop touring, his anxiety and depression bled into the words. He tries to hold onto fleeting moments of love before they fizzle out, even if it drives him near a breaking point. It's earnest yet self-aware enough to have some emotional stakes. He knows there will be heartbreak after heartbreak, yet he keeps looking no matter how much it'll hurt.

This is a strong record through and through, taking the rock of the past with the melancholic lens of the 2010s indie scene. Give it a chance.

Noodling around the kind of stuff that built up to that one Weeknd song. Wish I hadn't seen someone in the peanut gallery point out that the drums are basically identical on each song, because that person is right and it became really distracting.

I liked the first song, I just didn’t need to listen to it for an hour. Turned out to be a loooooong, boring lump that all sounded the same.

I'm a casual fan of this band. I listen to an album and then forget what it sounds like until I listen to it again. This is good. Moody. Atmospheric. Layered. But not memorable.

I expected a more wild or exotic album from how absolutely ludicrous and pretentious the band describes themselves. The album was alright but nothing special. Prog rock influence but eh

Tom Petty already exists

Pretty dull at points, but enough hints of Dylan, Springsteen, and some of the better 90s indie, that it didn't annoy me much. I think they were pretty popular with the critics and reviewers at the time, but there's no great evidence for why on this record. In level and (a little) in style, it prompts me to think of what an American Badly Drawn Boy would be like

What's that Lassie? A Don Henley soundalike me lacking Don's way with a hook has fallen down a well? Shall we just leave him there?

Other choices they could have from 2014 to name just a few: Sharon Van Etten (broadly similar but can write a tune), Sleaford Mods, Run the Jewels, Scott Walker & Sunn O))), etc

Ik heb het al vaker getypt. Een live-album is valsspelen. Het is vaak een best-of. Al begrijp ik hem in dit geval wel. Het grote publiek kent de bent juist van de single die van dit album afkomt.

Bij een live-album ben ik al snel wat sneller vergevingsgezind. Nog een reden waarom een live-album valsspelen is. Maar eerlijk is eerlijk. Er valt weinig te vergeven. Het is een kwalitatief sterk optreden. Het rockt zeker. Ik mis vooral wat uitschieters. Maar aan de andere kant zit er ook geen dip in.

Ik zou het album niet snel een tweede keer opzetten. Normaal geef ik dan niet meer dan drie sterren. Maar dat voelt niet goed in dit geval. Er zit een afstand tussen andere platen die een 3 scoren. Een 3,5 verdienen ze toch minimaal.

4/5

It's like if Tom Petty and the heartbreaker's made an album in the style of death cab for cutie. I'll probably listen to them again

11/10 perfect amazing if bob dylan and springsteen had a lovechild this would be it

This album sounds like if Don Henley, Tom Petty, and Bob Dylan got together and did a collaboration, this would be the result. It's modern indie rock with those 80's-90's flairs. Really solid. I enjoyed this album so much, I explored some more of The War on Drugs' catalog, and haven't heard a bad song yet!

Favourite songs: Red Eyes, Eyes to the Wind, Lost in the Dream, Under the Pressure, In Reverse, An Ocean I Between the Waves, Burning, Disappearing

Least favourite songs: The Haunting Idle

5/5

It's all a bit dad-rock, gentle fist pump while sipping a cup of tea for me. Since others have pointed out the drums thing, it's really bothering me. It must be the most dull band to play in as a drummer. Even though there's plenty of layers of sound to the whole thing it still somehow feels really anaemic. And it's just so bloody boring, christ.

Autumnal and nostalgic, this album wears it's influences unabashedly and unironically. In 2014 being a rock band is like wearing a vintage shirt, it's inevitably a self-consciously retro enterprise whose success/failure is predicated on having good taste and knowing how to make old stuff fit. So this isn't the most original album you'll ever hear, but they have great taste in what vintage rock elements they borrow and a knack for arranging them all into something that's warm and cozy and fits perfectly. The guitar playing is simple, melodic, and totally effective, focusing on tone and texture over fireworks, it's echoey and washes in and out, sometimes fuzzy or all phaser warble and tremolo tremble, sometimes bright and clear and cutting. His voice isn't spectacular but sits just right in the mix; hoarse mumbly and shy but very affecting, it flits in and out of the layers of keys, synths, sax and guitar. They build tension and energy slowly through repetition of basic chord progressions, lead riffs and drum-machine sounding rhythms that becomes trance-like, peaking and deflating and going again.