The War On Drugs’ Dave Hartley has a more bleaker world view on his new Nightlands album.
One of, if not the most frequent criticism of The War On Drugs in recent years has been their obvious connectivity with the popular past, be it through tracing beads of either Dylan, Springsteen or, even more cruelly Dire Straits, into Adam Granduciel’s blue-collar-for-white-collar rock.
Not that this idle chatter has particularly hurt the band critically or commercially, and the space between albums which that success affords leaves a vacuum for the assorted band members to pursue solo projects, and Nightlands is that of their otherwise bass player Dave Hartley.
This downtime has allowed him, since 2010, to release three albums in that guise prior to Moonshine. By necessity, this most recent effort was even more of a self-determined one; after he relocated from the band’s spiritual home in Philadelphia to Asheville in North Carolina, he then had to build a home studio in a barn attached to the hundred-something-year-old house in the mountains that was his new base.
Asheville is no metropolis but Hartley’s music – rooted in harmony and braids of dreamy synth pop but also possessing the atmospherics of his other outlet – has been more affected by the meta than it might sound.
Take for instance Stare Into The Sun, an otherwise pleasant yacht rocker that would be a quite effective background for the popping of a cork. Listen more closely however, and Hartley is delivering a less than appreciative farewell to former president Donald Trump; ‘You’ve got your sheep/But you’re no shepherd’, he cherubically scolds, before delivering the real kiss off with: ‘The dog has had its day/Now it’s time to pass away/Fold your tiny hands/And your ill-fitting pants’.
It’s no accident: working remotely with a cast of selected collaborators from his immediate circle and beyond, Hartley didn’t set out to make a political record, but gradually his frustration with the discord mounted, leading to a tipping point where, ‘I decided to just let that come out, and it manifested itself lyrically’.
Maybe this is the strategy that nobody would see coming – kill them with kindness. And despite the proselytising, Moonshine in form resembles a Currents-era Tame Impala or a particularly blissed out Animal Collective.
Opener Looking Up gambols at sunny afternoon pace, vocoder adding a tinge of the surreal to what otherwise is something you want to smile at and kiss on each cheek.
This makes way for Down Here, six minutes of almost cheesy Tropicalia where the addition of a sax lulls enemies into an even more profound sense of false security.
They should approach with more care: Hartley uses his license to bend feelings; the title-track is a nearly acapella version of America The Beautiful, one that he eventually subverts into a condemnation of the hypocrisy of the American dream.
This trade-off between sleeping and wakefulness is a pattern that in one way or the other is repeated throughout. On No Kiss for The Lonely the theme is of a thankless dive into further darkness, played out over something which Air might have once produced, whilst With You is a throwback to the time when, for what felt like about five minutes, chill wave might conquer the world.
With that doorway passed, instrumental closer Song For Brad comes across like a theme tune for dystopian thriller based in paradise where you shouldn’t make any plans after happy hour.
If we accept that, as typified by The War On Drugs, all art is essentially theft, Nightlands flees the scene of some MOR crimes. On Moonshine though, Dave Hartley’s American nightmare sounds like a glossily peculiar heaven.
