The War On Drugs: Born To Run Away and Hide

SERvin’ Up! – w/c August 28, 2017

The War On Drugs – A Deeper Understanding
King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard – Sketches of East Brunswick
Iron & Wine – Beast Epic
Citizen Kay – Belly Of The Beast
Fallon Cush – Morning
Dent May – Across The Multiverse
Liars – TFCF
Wrongtom Meets The Ragga Twins – In Dub
Various Artists – Rice Is Nice Mixtape Volume 4
Gold – What About The Child?
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Hello,

Guitar solos. Which side of the fence are you on with them? If tight and to the point is the way you like your guitar tunes, I can almost guarantee that the new album from The War On Drugs will not boil your potatoes. However, the precision with which bandleader Adam Granduciel executes his widescreen rock vision on A Deeper Understanding is something that might make the stiffest member of Kraftwerk nod in acknowledgement. There doesn’t feel a minute wasted here, nothing so much loose as sustained within an epic rock framework. These songs motor like the freewheeling road trips of Dylan, Springsteen and Petty, but Granduciel invests an inverted type of logic into his work, somehow turning the anthemic style of those artists inside out for a journey that essentially takes place inside the vistas of his mind. America has had Born To Run – this might be Born to Run Away and Hide.

Iron & Wine, the long-running project for Austin, Texas resident Sam Beam has evolved into many incarnations since his lo-fi bedroom folk was discovered by the Sub Pop label in2002. Since then, Beam has woven much definitively American music through his own, touching on soft-rock, soul, jazz and funk in a way that for mine often favoured embellishment over essence. In coming back to the Sub Pop label where it al began, Beam seems to have made a conscious return to the sweet and searching folk style of those earlier albums on Iron & Wine’s first album in four years, Beast Epic. 15 years down the line there is more polish and drama, Beam’s glorious voice in full bloom. Couched with vexed questions, Beam somehow has a way of pouring a lot of love into the unknown and once again is back at his most nuanced and gorgeous.

The Rice Is Nice label is back with another instalment in their super mixtape series, this time around focussing on the force of female artists in the Australian underground. There’s some incredible vitality here in this sublimely curated snapshot of Australian indie fare and its diversity, lining up garage-rock, post-punk, synth-wave and industrial/electronic sounds for a compilation teeming with fantastic energy. You might have heard of Mere Women, Heart Beach or Heat Wave, but now’s your chance to discover Red Red Krovvy, Rackett, Hair Die and the rest in this inspired collection as well as help provide legal support for the vulnerable in our country as all proceeds go to the National Justice Project. That’s some nice rice!

Also, new tunes from Beaches, Jolie Holland & Samantha Parton, Robert Muinos, Sumie, The Cactus Channel, Noire, Ben Salter and King Krule.