Song Exploder - The War On Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore (feat. Lucius)

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

The War on Drugs is a band from Philadelphia who formed in 2005. They won the Grammy for Best Rock Album in 2018. This year, they put out their fifth album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore. Adam Granduciel is the singer and lead guitarist in the band, and I talked to him at his recording space here in Los Angeles. In this episode, Adam breaks down the title track from I Don’t Live Here Anymore, from the original demo to the version that was hammered out after months of work. And he explains how the song was influenced by Bob Dylan and his own newborn son. To learn more, visit songexploder.net/the-war-on-drugs.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. The War on Drugs is a band from Philadelphia, who formed in 2005. They won the Grammy for Best Rock album in 2018. This year, they put out their fifth album, I don't live here anymore. Adam Grand Dusiel is the singer and lead guitarist in the band, and I talked to him at his recording space here in L.A. In this episode, Adam breaks down the title track from I Don't Live Here Anymore.

He explains how the song was influenced by Bob Dylan and his own newborn son. I'm Adam from The War on Drugs. We had just had our first child late July of 2019. With I Don't Live Here anymore, it started basically as me sitting in the nursing chair in Bruce's room when he was about six weeks old. He'd just be on his little blanket. I would be in the chair just strumming an acoustic, lightly. And I was just strumming these two chords that were cool.

I mean, it wasn't even that exciting. It was just B flat to C in this way that had a nice little vibe to it. And he's making a bunch of sounds. And so that night I went downstairs. Bruce had been asleep for a couple hours. And the point was to just record this little idea. I just did a quick drum machine, four on the floor, 808 kick. When I sit down to the mic with my headphones on, they're really loud, usually.

When I'm demoing something, I work so fast. So I put one mic up, and that's for the vocal and the guitar in that moment, you know? Just so I can, like, capture whatever is happening. I go into another world when I have my headphones on. it really puts me in like a totally different place to channel whatever idea I have for this song. I started singing. I was lying in my bed. I keep breathing everything.

Things happen in those moments that I've never been able to explain. I'm not thinking. I'm just like enjoying the moment. And it's just me and a microphone and my fun effects. And that's all it is. The original demo was basically nine verses. When you go somewhere for eight or nine minutes, you really only get one shot.

If I said, let's do another one, I probably would have started thinking about it too much. And when you start thinking is when you just, you lose the plot. That's kind of the joy, as painstaking as it can be, is starting with this thing where you're just improvising and then spending weeks, months, years, parsing through that moment. I liked the vocal melody.

I liked the mood, but there was still something that didn't excite me in the way that another song might. Robbie Bennett plays keyboards and piano in our band. And Robbie had asked if there was anything I was working on. It was right before Thanksgiving, 2019, and I sent him a link to this demo. and five, six days later, Robbie, he's like,

I sent you back something, it's probably all garbage, you know? And I took it in stride, I'm like, cool. And it was Thanksgiving, so I was walking in to buy a roasting pan for some turkey that I was going to overcook because I'm petrified of salmonella. And I'm walking in, I'm like, oh, let me just grab my headphones and we listen to this thing Robbie sent. The second I heard it, it blew my mind.

when Robbie added the riff. It immediately changed my whole vision of the song. In January of 2020, the band had just come out to Los Angeles, and we'd go to the studio for 14 hours a day and write, mess around, have fun, shoot hoops. That's what we love to do. And so Dave is sitting there in a fold-up chair and says, we should work and I not live here anymore.

I was like, okay, yeah, maybe. Yeah, I guess so. I don't know why I was so hesitant. I think I just knew that it was going to be like a journey once we tapped into that song. Maybe I wasn't ready to go there or I don't know. But we got a general BPM going. We were messing around in the room.

Robbie was playing the descending part on the piano, but it was like, it had already strayed so far from the vibe of that demo that me and Robbie had done. But our friend Eric Slick from Philadelphia who drums in the band Dr. Dogg, he was with us for a couple days. And we walked in the control room and then the room mics were up.

They were jacked for some reason. And he hit a drum out of nowhere. And all of a sudden, I was like, we got to make the song on that drum sound. I worked on it for the next month. There was like the drums and I committed to Robbie's demo guitar and synth. My demo bass was in there.

And one day, it just snapped into focus. And we decided to just bring in Lucius, Jess Wolf and Holly Lysig. They sang on Pain on the last record. They're just both hilarious, and we hit it off immediately and really musically on another level and just fantastic singers.

their first thing is to kind of lay down just some pads kind of like I would lay down a synth. They've known each other for so long and just musically they're so connected that Jess is doing one thing, Holly's doing this other thing, and they're totally in tune. Sonically but also just mentally,

they're just there. And then at the end of the session, they're like, you want us to do anything else? And I was like, I haven't done the vocals yet and I haven't written anything down, but I was like, there's these two lines I think might be in the chorus. So why don't you just sing these lines?

I want to find out everything I need to know, and we're all just walking to this darkness on our own. They did the vocals before I even did my vocals. So the song for a while was just basically no vocals except for their vocals in the chorus. I remember doing all the vocals for this song in two days. And I remember listening to the demo and picking through some of those impromptu moments

and trying to grab what I could from whatever came out in that moment. And we went to see Bob Dylan. It blew our fucking mind. When I played it for Dave, he got a kick out of that line. He thought it was funny that I had used like a proper noun

and it's not something I usually do. But I liked talking about Bob Dylan. So I still had that line when I was doing the vocals, but I wasn't sold on the fucking mind part because it felt like you're wasting a line because anybody could have blown your fucking mind. You know, it's like you could have gone to see Monster Truck Rally.

So why I use Bob Dylan's name, you know? But I remember the second day of those vocal sessions I came back. I was like, I don't want to punch that line to, and then I had to, we dance at Desolation Row. Like when we went to see Bob Dylan, we danced to Desolation Row. But I don't live here anymore, but I got no place to go.

I had visions of when I'd seen them and just specific people that I had shared that experience with, it meant something to me. It just put it in a place that was real. You know, it's like maybe the most real thing I've ever written because I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan. And I did go to see Bob Dylan. So why can't I just expand on this a little bit? Still, you know, I'd been collecting those verses like I was lying. in my bed, a creature void of form.

I was lying in my bed, a creature void of form. Adams referencing the end of the first stanza from Bob Dylan's song, Shelter from the Storm. The lyrics there go like this. You came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. Come in, she said, I'll give you a shelter from the storm.

I think I was using it to fill the space at first. But then I was like, well, I have this Bob Dylan line and maybe I can just use the shelter from the stormline because why not? In a lot of songs of mine, there's always been like somebody in the other end of the vocals. It's a conversation. I never took our love for granted.

You never left me wanting more, but you never recognize me, babe. I don't live here anymore. So I did a couple verses. And I remember taking a break in the choruses and knowing I needed to come back to those. And then I remember sitting there, playing the song back, and I was singing along like under my breath. And every line just fell out of my mouth. Like it never had really happened before where it became very clear to me in that moment what I was writing about and how to write it and how to say it.

I was just writing about pushing through everything that tries to drag you down, everything that tries to like, push you off your path. In that moment, I was writing those lyrics and the line was there at my fingertips before I could even finish saying it. Beating like a heart, I'm going to walk through every doorway. I can stop.

I need some time. I need control. I need your love. I want to find out everything I need to know. I'm going to say everything that there is to say. Although you've taken everything I need away, I'm going to make it to the place I need to go. We're all just walking through this darkness on our own.

I enjoy recording so much. I enjoy the process of sculpting the song so much because I don't sit down and write the words and have it immediately exist on the page as a song. Some songs are crafted, and then we record them live in the studio, but this felt like one that was going to be like a home recording through and through. The song started in that tiny little music room of mine, and then it went to Robbie's basement,

and he gave me this beautiful riff, and it needed to end up back in my headphones. I needed to take that to my little room and get in there with my own sounds. I just have this kind of cheap Kurtzweil electric piano that I bought to demo with, and that's like the bell, like the chiming bell tones. When I ended up putting the lead guitar in the song, the baby was sleeping, so I wanted to work on music, but I couldn't crank an amp in our house, obviously.

So I used this digital amp that pretty much models 100 different amps, but it's silent. And I just had headphones on, and I found this setting that was like a cranked marshal. And it ended up being like kind of the perfect sound. I feel like with our music it's like you want to have a great song but it's like the sound

like is there one sound you know it's not like the bass player's doing this and the drummer's this and the rhythm guitar is here no it's all one pulsing sound my sense of you before meeting you today

was someone who's very meticulous is that fair do you think that's right I think there's a difference between being meticulous and being a perfectionist. I don't want anything to be perfect, you know? I want there to be rough edges. I want there to be like a weird note. In fact, on the album, the real recording of this song,

the last line of the first verse, there's no, I mean, if you ask me, what are the words? I don't have words. I never wanted anything that someone had to give. I don't live here anymore. I went along in will There's no... It's like I drag it out.

It's like, I went along in wheel, but it's nothing. I was never able to like finish it. And I went back at the end when we were finishing the record. I was like, all right, let me just go punch that last line. I need to just figure out the word. I was like, it's silly that I've always just used this line

that just sounds like something. I was sitting there on the headphones. It was on loop for 20 minutes, this one line. And I was just like, you know what? It's fine. It is what it is. I went along in weird. I think there's an element of it being a song about growing into something

and going out of something. Growing into a newer, more realized life or a version of yourself that you're seeing take shape. I can see evidence of my evolution just from, settling into being a dad, you know? All of a sudden now, what's important to me, something had clicked. It makes going deep on music that much more enjoyable

because now it's like, I want to have these songs to share. And now here's I Don't Live Here Anymore by The War on Drugs featuring Lucius in its entirety. Visit songexplor.net for more information. You'll find links to buy or stream I don't live here anymore, and you can watch the music video. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th.

It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me.

So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuckus, Josh Molina, Minjin, Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. This episode was made by me with editing help from Craig Ely and Casey Deal, artwork by Carlos Lerma, music clearance by Kathleen Smith, and production assistance from Chloe Parker. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported,

artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Rishi Hereway, and you can follow the show at Song Exploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexplloter.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.