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Bido Lito! April 2015 Reviews
The War On Drugs (John Johnson / johnjohnson-photography.com)
THE WAR ON DRUGS
Amen Dunes
Harvest Sun & Liverpool Music
Week @ O2 Academy
As a project that has gradually mutated
into a full-on band concern over the past
half-decade, New Yorkers AMEN DUNES
have steadily accrued a cult following. Now
expanded to a three-piece, last year’s excellent
Love LP saw Damon McMahon’s crew score
the best reviews of their career. Strongly
redolent of Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star,
Amen Dunes’ rustic psychedelia proves a spoton complement to the headliners, reaching a
peak on Lonely Richard and Lilac In Hand.
“What’s the name of that club here, the
one with the balcony? ...The Kazimier?” chief
Druggist Adam Granduciel enquires a few
tracks in. Almost exactly three years ago
THE WAR ON DRUGS did indeed play The
bidolito
bidolito.co.uk
Kaz while touring Slave Ambient, the album
that saw the Philadelphians decisively edge
overground. Come 2015 and delayed from
the original November date, the troupe are at
the sold-out O2 Academy to play Lost In The
Dream, the album that scooped more positive
critical notices than any other in 2014.
The band open with instrumental trawl The
Haunting Idle, which bleeds into a driving
Idle
take on Burning the Dylan-esque Arms Like
Burning;
Boulders played third is a sly curveball as
songs from 2008 debut LP Wagonwheel
Blues are rarely played live. Released back
when the band were still stitching their sound
together, the track is re-tooled from its original
incarnation to slot seamlessly into the set.
Now exhibiting far greater confidence as
a frontman, Granduciel’s recent interview
statement that the hard slog of touring has
greatly improved him as a guitarist is clearly
evident. Able to effortlessly boss the material
without losing sight of the original songs,
proceedings are aided massively by a shithot bassist who instinctively knows when to
simply follow the chords and when to let rip
with improvisatory flourishes.
Assembled from keyboard patinas that hark
back to Springsteen’s mid-eighties albums
alongside endlessly repeating Spacemen
3-style synth motifs, the tracks effectively
provide huge canvases to be redrawn into
whatever form the band see fit. Moving from
processed beats to live drums, courtesy of a
sticksman behind a honeycombed-effect kit,
the transition in An Ocean In Between The
Waves is revelatory, outdoing even the studio
version as a wealth of new basslines send the
track stratospheric.
Red Eyes, firmly installed as the band’s
Eyes
best-known song to date, is greeted with
huge cheers at the first sign of the intro’s
synthesized strings while the now famous yelp
that kicks the band into full gear triggers mass
delirium. With the recently added baritone
sax giving greater emphasis to the songs’
foundations, a stunning solo break towards
the close of Eyes To The Wind pushes the track
into exotic new pastures.
A superb cover of All Things Must Pass gem
Beware Of Darkness played late on makes
George Harrison’s song sound like a WOD
composition, while a rapturously received
Baby Missiles highlights Tom Petty’s influence
and the Americana thread that runs throughout
Granduciel’s work generally. By contrast,
kosmische rhythms and shoegazing textures
come to the fore on Your Love Is Calling My Name
as Granduciel manipulates the FX boxes at his
feet into waves of overlapping feedback. The
mammoth, almost two-hour set extends right
up to the 11pm curfew; an encore is demanded
but time constraints unfortunately prevail. Gig
of the year so far? Indubitably. Gig of the year
all told? Chances are.
Richard Lewis