We're coming up on five years since the War On Drugs released their major-label debut I Don't Live Here Anymore, our favorite album of 2021. Despite some teasers indicating new music is well underway, the fan base is growing impatient. So it's with great pleasure that I pass along news that the sixth Drugs studio album is nearing competion.
Lead Drugs warrior Adam Granduciel recently gave a new interview to Guitar.com about his love of effects pedals. "I wake up every morning thinking about what’s on my pedalboard," Granduciel says. "And I have so many pedalboards everywhere. I love that feeling of when you plug into one and just think, 'Oh, that’s amazing!'"
The interview was conducted backstage at this year's National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) convention, where Granduciel was being honored by pedal manufacturer Boss for his lifelong embrace of their products. He mostly talks about his various Boss pedals and why he believes they're the best in the biz. But near the end, interviewer Josh Gardner does ask about the existence of new Drugs music. Granduciel says it's almost done, and he made it at home:
Yeah I’m almost done making a record, and we’re close to the end. I wanted to do something that’s not different, necessarily, in terms of the way it sounds, but something that’s trying to get back to the first couple of records I made.
So it’s basically fully homemade. I mean, people always joke because I’m like, "I want to make a homemade record." And they come to my house and my studio is like, vintage API and all my Neve stuff… and they’re like, "This is a homemade record?!"
But the only way I could do this record is if I had all the time and the access to be able to do it the way I want. So, it’s coming along, but I just work on it all the time. It still sounds like a band, but there’s all sorts of stuff.
Of course, the natural follow-up question was "Are there any new pedals that are heavily featuring on the new record?" To which Granduciel responded, "It’s always similar ones, like the Digital Dimension. I did get a Bi-Phase recently, a vintage one, so I put that on everything! I traded a whole bunch of stuff to a kid for a Bi-Phase!"
Lucky kid! And lucky us! Drop the album, Adam!
