Washington City Paper: How long have you been making music?

Adam Granduciel: The first War on Drugs record was the first real record I made. Age 19 or 20 is when I started getting into recording on a smaller scale–it was at home, on digital 8 tracks or cassette 4 tracks. I started playing guitar at 14, I was playing all the time and I started writing at 16 or 17, and later I started trying to record it. The first tour I ever went on was in 2004. I went on a month-long U.S. tour with another band. That was my first tour, and it was like so exhausting—it felt like it was two years or something. Now for me a month is easy, it doesn’t even phase me.

Ever since I started playing, I always took it really seriously. For a long time, it was a really personal thing—a hobby in a way. I wrote and recorded, and it’s not that I didn’t have ambition, I just wasn’t ready at that point to take the next step. Around the time I moved to Philly in ‘03, I started falling into a group of people who played in local bands and brought me out of my shell of a bedroom. I started playing with other people and playing live a lot more.

WCP: When did you go full time?

AG: In my mind, probably four or five years ago. Realistically, I don’t know if I’m quite there yet. Full-time in terms of always working on it, it was probably when I was 20 or 21 that it was my main thing in life. Even when I was working a job all day long, I was thinking of songs all day long, playing all the time, staying up until three or four in the morning recording and going back to work in the morning, just doing that all the time.

WCP: Was there a moment where the band really came together—where your vision really began to crystallize?

AG: [It was] around 2005 or 2006, after Kurt [Vile] and myself had been playing together for a few years, when the first incarnation of The War on Drugs live experience had come together, I had a surge of creative vision. I had been doing music for a while, taking what I’d been doing in the bedroom and taking it out into a live experience. Everyone was getting better at what they played, and it took another jump for me. I was making recordings and obsessing over those, playing a show and obsessing over the show and thinking how can it be better and can I pull this off. I think that’s when I began thinking of the songs on a bigger level.

WCP: What exactly is the band’s relationship with Kurt Vile?

AG: He was around when the first record came out. It was always my band, but he was like the other guy consistently in the band. We always worked on a lot of stuff together. I worked on a lot of his stuff, and he helped with some of my stuff. He wasn’t able to do a lot of touring because he was doing his own stuff seriously.

WCP: Does he still have any input in what you do? Do you ever trade ideas?

AG: He played guitar on a track [on Slave Ambient], but we never really swapped demos. We're just like a thing to anchor off of. If he was working in the studio and I was there, I'd help him see a vision. The same goes for The War on Drugs; he’d come over and be a part of the experience and just help a song come to fruition like anyone else in the band.

WCP: You guys do seem to share a few aesthetic similarities, particularly with your attention to atmosphere. Do you two draw a lot from the same well, musically?

AG: I think a lot of that comes from the stuff we started doing together when we started playing together. We had a shared interest in certain things. We came to a certain working process where the ambiance was at the forefront on some level. Also, we had records we liked and bands we played with early on.

WCP: Do you feel like you hit your stride with the newest LP, or is it just another record in a progression?

AG: I think it’s a pretty good representation of what the past couple years have been. The year after [debut LP Wagonwheel Blues], I was working on it, but I wasn’t really, truly working on it—I was just sort of doing it at home. I think it shows a step forward for me in terms of composition and structure. I don’t think I could make another record like this one, but I think I learned some techniques that I’ll take into another direction for the next one. I don’t think I hit my stride because I don't want to keep making the same record, I don't want to make another ambient rock record...but definitely, it could only be made by someone who spent that much time loving the sounds and the songs he was working on. I’m definitely super proud of it how it came together and that it did come together. For a while, I couldn't wrap my head around certain parts of it, or finish things, or I was running out of money, so I'm proud it came out. I definitely learned a lot in making it.

All The War on Drugs records have been made without a live band in place. The first was kind of just myself and Kurt. Future Weather was like I had friends coming over and recording parts here and there, and eventually I mixed most of Future Weather at my house with some frustration, and Slave Ambient was kind of the same thing. Now we’ve done so much touring since March, it’s gonna be great to showcase that on the next record. I think a lot of the recording techniques I used, now I can apply to a live band in a live setting. Now it'll be great to have the songs and learn them beforehand in a certain way together.

WCP: As a listener, compared to even the EP that came out before it, Slave Ambient seems to be more of a complete statement—or at least a more singular listening experience. It all sort of melds together. Was that planned?

AG: It was definitely intentional in the sense that I spent a lot of time toward the end putting everything together. I was definitely approaching every song independently, with the exception of the ones that run into each other, like "The Animator" and "The City." I wanted it to feel like a whole sort of experience. I wanted to do that on all the records, but I had a breakthrough with the sequencing, and I figured out some other ways to tie it together. A lot of the instrumentals I liked the way it sounded...a lot of those I put on there was like one quick moment in time where I put something on something else and it sounded really good but ended up not going in that direction. I wanted to put that on there to show where the songs came from or could have gone. A lot of the songs went through so many different versions and approaches.

At the end of the day, I wanted it to feel like a journey of the making of it in a way. I get attached to these little moments that might not be full-fledged songs, but they have a certain quality to them that I don’t want to just be a demo or something. For me, I think everything is worth putting on a record.

WCP: It sounds like the recording sessions were really piecemeal. Was it difficult to make coherent?

AG: Not really. Nothing was really pieced together. I was working from the same set of tracks. Over the course of time, I was able to constantly remove things or erase things or constantly move forward with a certain idea. I’d work on it at home or at [producer Jeff Zeigler's] for a little bit, or I’d find myself in North Carolina and work on it there. I'd listen to it a lot and I’d add something, and then I'd book another week at Jeff's.

For me, it's OK to spend a week in a studio and maybe only come out with two tracks that you really enjoy. What’s the best for me is the process of arriving to something great. Even if you spend $5,000 at a studio in a week, that doesn’t mean you have to keep everything. It has a lot to do with drums. Even though they’re really basic sounding, the drums are a huge part [of The War on Drugs]. Finding the right drum sound or the right rhythm or the right approach...usually, that was the one thing that would hold me up at the end.

WCP: There’s an interesting amount of '80s-era synth washes—I’m thinking U2's Unforgettable Fire, Springsteen's Born in the USA, Billy Joel's We Didn’t Start the Fire—but the album feels much, much looser than any of those records. Were those touch points at all? Was it conscious?

AG: That just kind of happened. I like that stuff. The thing about Born in The USA I love the most is probably the keyboards, you know Danny Federici's keyboards on there. I’m not into '80s synth-pop, but I love the idea of having synth hooks in a song. When I’m working on a song, I’ll think this needs a keyboard somewhere, so I’ll just be fiddling around and find a melody I like but I'll never try and embellish it too much. The difference is mine will just fit into the general mix of things, but it’s not a fist-pumping keyboard coda. I don't make too much of a point of it being a hook.

For me, it’s just having little identifiable moments, whether it's a synth for one part or a guitar for another part. As I’m recording the song, I’m slowly finding these parts, and they aren't written beforehand. I'm just finding these little places they’ll fall. I like the idea of little melodic things that tie a song together... but Unforgettable Fire, I love all that early U2 stuff for sure. I listened to it a lot as a kid for sure.

WCP: How old are you now?

AG: 32

WCP: Is it odd to achieve so much acclaim at this point in your life?

AG: To be honest, I never expected anything. I expected to play music my whole life and record, I didn’t expect to go up a notch. It’s cool because I would've been doing it anyway. It’s awesome. It’s great because we’ve all been doing it a long time because we love doing it. This band has gone through a lot of shitty moments over the years where it would’ve been easy to just say we can’t afford to tour anymore, but everyone's stuck with it.

For me, as the leader of the band, it's been good to see bandmates like Dave Hartley and Robbie Bennett who just stick with you and understand the vision and respect the music and enjoy playing it. Everyone has high hopes, and to finally see more people coming out and enjoying it... It doesn’t validate anything, it’s just a good thing. It feels good to hear people connecting to the music and the records, and that’s the thing that doesn’t come around too often: people just liking the music and not just getting behind a new band. People connect to some of the songs and the general atmosphere of the records and the songs. It’s a lot easier for the band now to respect that. We focus on playing the songs and every night taking them to another place. [It's] tighter than it's ever been from a live perspective, so it's exciting. We were going to be doing it anyway, but it's nice to have the ability to travel whenever we want and have people come out. We can get better and look to the future.

WCP: In a live setting, do you try to replicate the album or embellish it?

AG: We try to embellish. I don't think I'm able to take the songs to any new crazy direction—I think some bands take songs to somewhere new to where it's almost unrecognizable. For me, it took such a long time to arrive at the arrangements and the songs, so I feel like I already went through that. It’s definitely a little more rock 'n' roll, and a little louder. I wouldn’t say it’s jammier, but we try and take those parts of the record that are spacious and layered, and even though I'm not looping any guitars, we try and arrive at the same general feeling. Nothing becomes unrecognizable and we don’t jam stuff out too much, but there are times that are a little more rock and roll.

There are no backing tracks, we just play with a drum machine on some parts. We've been able to replicate a lot of the sounds on the record by buying a couple pieces of equipment. Everybody in the band played on certain parts of the record, but now everyone's adapting their sensibilities to what's already recorded, which is great. It's like, they're playing parts a little better than I played them, but still with a lot of feeling.

The War on Drugs plays The Rock & Roll Hotel on Sunday at 8 p.m. $14. Photo by Darshana Borah.

MUSIC

Kurt Vile and the Violators' latest record, Smoke Ring for My Halo, is their most low-key and pensive release, but live—at least judging by the last time the group played in D.C., last November at the Black Cat Backstage—they get heavy and mystical. Don't request "Freeway"; we wouldn't want Vile to start resenting his breakout anthem and drop it from his setlists. With Woods, White Fence, and True Widow at 7 p.m. at Rock & Roll Hotel. $16 advance, $18 at the door.

Danish metal! Rarely a bad thing, if, you know, it's your thing. Volbeat at 6:30 p.m. at 9:30 Club. $25.

Whatever they're doing—gothy shoegaze, gloomy electro-pop—Arlington's Screen Vinyl Image makes music that is equal parts oppressive and pretty. This goes for their music videos too. We eagerly anticipate this band's forthcoming full-length. With The Prids and Brief Candles at 8 p.m. at Black Cat Backstage. $10.

Update! Subterranean A has Alex Bleeker & the Freaks, the jammy, mellow project from the Real Estate member, at 8 p.m.

BOOKS

Speaking of oppressive and pretty: In his new book Beijing Welcomes You, Tom Scocca (Deadspin's managing editor and a former WCP staffer) chronicles how the Chinese capital has been transformed into what the superpower hopes to present as a beacon of openness—even as the city remains alien and mysterious. From the press blurb: "Scocca talked to the scientists tasked with changing the weather; interviewed designers and architects churning out projects; checked out the campaign to stop public spitting; documented the planting of trees, the rerouting of traffic, the demolition of the old city, and the construction of the new metropolis." Trippy! He speaks tonight at 7 p.m. at Politics & Prose. Free.

FILM

Nerds with protest signs! Revolution OS documents the open source movement. 8 p.m. at Artisphere. $6.

INSERT ROCK LOBSTER JOKE HERE

The B-52s play the zoo! At 7 p.m. $65 if you're not a member of Friends of the National Zoo.

And record stores. On previous tours, Philadelphia indie-rock troubadour Kurt Vile spent so much of his down time browsing shops that he decided to do a week-long tour of in-store acoustic sets. He's at Red Onion Books and Records tonight at 6 p.m..

"I'm definitely a record-head," Vile says. "So that's why I like doing in-store shows while on tour."

(Vile's mini-tour reminds me of Robert Fripp's "Exposure Non-Tour," when the guitarist performed in to-go pizza places and barber shops using his portable Frippertronics system.).

The trek should be a good reminder to record-store clerks to stock up on Vile's new album, Smoke Ring for My Halo. And, undoubtedly, Vile will be doing some crate-digging himself. "I lust for things that are hard to find, like Neil Young's On the Beach," Vile says. "But I crave for things that are easy to find…I'm obsessed with the Stones."

Any good vinyl discoveries lately, Mr. Vile? "Bert Jansch, Birthday Blues."

No kidding: Vile has a lot in common with the Jansch, a founding member of the '60s folk-rock band Pentangle. The dusty sounds of renowned fingerstyle guitarists Jack Rose and John Fahey also turn up on Smoking Ring for My Halo.

As Vile finger-picks on his fretboard on the opening song, "Baby's Arms," you can hear the inescapable yet humble sliding of fingers upon metallic strings, the twanging higher strings, and the interchange of complementary bass and treble notes. "Finger-picking is addicting. I've been playing this way for 10 years," says Vile, who's been creating music since his teenage years. He wanted to own a guitar, but ended up with a banjo instead. "My dad was a blue-grass aficionado."

Learning to finger-pick and sing simultaneously took a bit of practice, but became natural over time. "Basically, you have to start with the thumb, doing bass, and get comfortable with that, go back and forth with your thumb, add a finger, and then another one," Vile explains. "I just couldn't stop with it though."

I'm pretty sure I tried to call Merriweather Post Pavilion "Record of the year" back in January, when I reviewed it, but City Paper managing editor Andrew Beaujon argued that this statement might be a tad premature, given that '09 still had 11 months left to go. But here we are in December and it's still great.

Mi Ami
Watersports
Touch & Go/Quarterstick

From a sort-of-embarrassing-but-earnest blog post that I wrote after attending three Mi Ami's shows last March:

But yeah, they really dropped the A-bomb on me. I had seen them before–when they were still a duo and then last February when they came through DC–and I liked it, but thought it just sounded liked a more stripped down version of Black Eyes. This time though, I don't know, it really clicked. The good shows had the same energy as some of the Evangelical church services that I went to back when I was writing the Service Industry column. The kind of thing where the band doesn't play hymns so much as they act as a foil for the preacher's gradually intensifying emotions and everything just gets crazier and crazier until some old lady passes out in the isle. Except at the DC show, it wasn't an old lady, just some tragic punker kid who had a septum piercing and smelled sort of like salami.

More after the jump:

Love of Diagrams
Nowhere Forever
Unstable Ape/Remote Control

The Melbourne, Australia trio graduates from scrappy post-punk to expansive space-rock that's one part shoegaze uplift and two parts Flying Nun Records-style skronk. The Northern hemisphere slept on Love of Diagrams this year, big time.

Phoenix
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Glassnote

French pop band reaches for the stars, benefits from not being American.

Deleted Scenes
Birdseed Shirt
What Delicate Recordings

Sad, uplifting, and bizarre in just about equal measure, Birdseed Shirt is probably the best record anybody in D.C. put out this year. It really deserves that spot in Black Cat's jukebox.

Polvo
In Prism
Merge

Hey, not everything has to be like Star Wars. Sometimes your heroes take ten years off, come back, and really kick ass.

Obits
I Blame You
SubPop

Obits guitarist Sohrab Habibion called me out on Black Plastic Bag (R.I.P.) because I made fun of him for wearing shorts onstage at SXSW. In hindsight, I was being a lazy critic and a bit of a jerk. We got it sorted out, though (I think), but even if Habibion and his bandmates hate my guts, I'll still listen to this record.

Kurt Vile
Childish Prodigy
Matador

Philadelphia songwriter and mega-producer Daniel Lanois are privy to the same secret: If you take the music of the baby-boomers and run it through a ton of effects, it sounds cool again. Hey, don’t laugh, it worked for Bob Dylan on Oh, Mercy. And it works for Kurt Vile, too.

Blues Control
Local Flavor
Siltbreeze

The ultimate soundtrack to the final beer of the evening.

Dam Funk
Toeachizown
Stones Throw

Dam Funk has the chords of eternity at his fingertips. Yeah, that sounds like a cheesy Jim Morrison lyric, but when it comes to synthesizers, the Los Angeles-based modern-funk pioneer really does have the touch. "[I'm trying to get] the best chord that I’ve ever heard in my life. It can hit your heart strings," he told me during a Q&A last May. "Not that Lil Jon effect–those are the devil chords. I’m trying to get the beautiful chords, to get to something inside." His debut, Toeachizown, is crammed with just those chords.

Records that I probably enjoyed just as much, but was too lazy to blurb:
Omar S Fabric 45
Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca
Flaming Lips Embryonic
True Womanhood Magic Child Digital 7"
Fresh & Onlys The Fresh & Onlys
The Clientele Bonfires on the Heath
Circulatory System Signal Morning
The Points Beat In Hell 7"
Real Estate S/T

From Dave Malitz's interview on Post-Rock last April:

"I knew how to make a release weird and good. But I just banged out all these offers and they ended up coming out at the same time. I kind of knew the recordheads would like it. I knew made sure it was weird enough while still sitting on my ultimate full-length for a bigger label."

From Jonah Weiner's profile in the New York Times:

“I know the band is going to get real tight the more we play, but I’m nervous, man,” he said, heading backstage to tune his acoustic guitar. “I want people to be able to hear all the different dynamics.”

And in Maggie Serrota's interview in AV Club, he explains why he's been comparing his record to My Bloody Valentine's shoegaze behemoth Loveless:

I said that mainly to hype it up because I was really anxious to get it out there—so I had to say something

Which is great, actually. It seems rare that people who make sludgy, weird music are so open about actually, you know, upfront about wanting people to listen to it. And listen to it they should. The best tracks from Childish Prodigy, Vile's Matador debut, strikes a sweet spot between hermetic basement grot and the grandeur of the most transcendent Bruce Strpingsteen studio jam. Kurt Vile may not be shy about hyping his tunes, but at least he can deliver on it.

Kurt Vile & The Violators w/ Benjee Ferree, The New Flesh
@ Black Cat
$12, 8:30 pm
1811 14th St. NW

Kurt Vile: "Overnight Religion"
Philadelphia songwriter and mega-producer Daniel Lanois are privy to the same secret: If you take the music of the baby-boomers and run it through a ton of effects, it sounds cool again. Hey, don't laugh, it worked for Bob Dylan on Oh, Mercy. And it works for Kurt Vile, too. A little bit of reverb and delay goes a long way here, turning the strummy "Overnight Religion," into something spacey and meditative. And probably at only a fraction of what Peter Gabriel had to pay, too.

Beastie Boys f. Nas: "Too Many Rappers"
Yeah, the Beastie Boys are old, but at least they aren't pretending otherwise. "Oh my god/ just look at me/ grandpa been rapping since '83," raps Mike D Ad-Rock on this new track, apparently debuted at this year's Bonnaroo festival. But where the Beastie Boys used to be bratty, here they're just sounding cranky–about contemporary rappers, holograms, and Wolf Blitzer. Ad-Rock, again, lays out the group's beef in articulate and unambiguous language. "All you crap rappers/ you're rapping like crap.

Free Energy: "Free Energy"
A big curve ball from DFA, the label who, up until this point at least, mainly concentrated on producing and releasing post-punk and retro-disco records. From the sound this song, though, Free Energy's influences predate all that club junk by at least ten years. The finger prints of Thin Lizzy, Big Star, and Shoes–bands that have never been closer than a thousand yards to a remix–are all over this. There is, however, still some cowbell going on.

At any rate, this year should be even clumsier, weirder, and better (relatively speaking) than the last, at least if the line-up below is any indication.

DNA Test Fest II @ Velvet Lounge
$10/1-Day Pass $15/2-Day Pass
915 U Street NW, Washington, DC

Friday: True Womanhood, Screen Vinyl Image, Rosemary Krust, Lampshades, Pygmy Shrews, Pfisters, Armida & Her Imaginary Band.

Saturday: Pink Reason, Kurt Vile, Drunk Driver, The New Flesh, Twin Stumps, Unholy Two, Eightyfive.

Pygmy Lush played some of its quiet, non-hardcore material, from last year's Mount Hope, sounded pretty good.


Emotionally speaking, Des Ark doesn't really have a first-gear. It goes straight from zero to hair-tearing emotional-basket-case. The last time I saw the band, at the '08 Different Kind of Dude Fest, I'm pretty sure that the second guitarist openly wept while giving a soul-bearing pre-performance speech. Heavy stuff. Lead songwriter/guitarist Aimee Argote has a new, dry-eyed, backing band now, but the songs–including one number that's apparently called "FTW Y'all"–are still achingly earnest. But the band's eff-you attitude was pretty refreshing, given the throngs of shirtless butt-rockers that had been booked throughout the festival.

I missed Frodus the first time around, and I still wish I could have checked the band out during its heyday, but Saturday's reunion set was good enough. Lots of stage diving, chair throwing, and water spitting near the end. Kind of hoping they that keep the reunion going for a while.

Kurt Vile: Somewhere behind all of that hair is a pretty great songwriter. A pretty great songwriter who, I might add, has good taste in guitar-pedals. His band, The Violators, looked kind of like they were plucked off of a Comedy Central late-night improv showcase, but they delivered the rootsy-space rock goods. My favorite non-reunion show of the whole festival.

Echo & the Bunnymen: Had I any sense, I would have attended the Echo & the Bunnymen show that took place earlier in the day, you know, before the band had the time to get too wasted to go on stage. The roadie stalled as best he could—tuning and then re-tuning the guitars and horsing around with Ian McCulloch's mic-stand—until the band finally arrived on stage 45 minutes late. By that point, I wasn't really in the mood, and McCulloch–who bore a striking resemblance to the septuagenarian Elizabeth Taylor—wasn't doing much to change my mind. Took off after hearing "Lips Like Sugar."

Daniel Johnston: My last concert of SXSW and a good way to end. Johnston did some songs solo, then accompanied by a band, and finally, a great cover of The Beatles "I'm So Tired." "Who do you think is crazier: Daniel Johnston or HR?" a friend asked me, referring to the Bad Brains frontman whom we had both seen perform earlier in the week. I would argue that HR is, in fact, crazier. Daniel Johnson may have done serious time in a mental hospital and even pulled the keys out of his father's airplane mid-flight, but these days he looks pretty together on stage. HR, on the other hand, had the all the presence of a damp t-shirt and seemed only half-aware that he was giving a concert. Were you to ask me who the better dresser was, though, definitely HR.

Kurt Vile: "My Sympathy"