The War on Drugs

2009-07-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

New Dates!!!

07/22/09 Granada, Spain - TBA
07/23/09 Pollensa, Majorca Island, Spain - Claustro
07/24/09 Zaragoza, Spain - La Playa
07/25/09 San Sebastian, Spain - Jazzaldia - Escenario Verde
07/26/09 San Sebastian, Spain - Jazzaldia

08/15/09 Asheville, NC - Transfigurations

***

2009-05-25T09:33:00.001-07:00

June 13th - Union Pool, Brooklyn w/ Endless Boogie
July 24, 25 - San Sebastian, Spain
August 15th - Harvest Records 5 year Fest, Asheville, NC w/ Brightblack Morning Light, Espers and a ton more!!!

2009-05-04T21:12:00.000-07:00

28th March 2009, 12:34 AM
lfranz5451
Gear Head

Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 37

the problem is you're playing a Taylor haha....meaning known for too much bright end....pick up a jumbo....go gibson j-series or a lerger martin, you'll get the SOUND of your life. And believe it or not...little hint, figured this out playing around with some of the guns n roses guitar players a few years ago out in LA....D'ADARRIO STRINGS....I know it sounds nuts....they'll take some of that natural painful ping right out of those guitars with the lighter wood. try a set of 12's with heavy bottoms or something.

2009-03-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

*** Full US Tour Dates Announced !!! ***

03/29/09 Cambridge, MA - TT The Bear's Place
03/30/09 Brooklyn, NY - Union Hall
03/31/09 Albany, NY - Valentine's w/ The Hold Steady
04/01/09 Buffalo, NY - Tralf Music Hall w/ The Hold Steady
04/02/09 Grand Rapids, MI - Calvin College Fine Arts Center w/ The Hold Steady
04/03/09 Urbana, IL - Courtyard Cafe w/ The Hold Steady
04/04/09 Bloomington, IN - Jakes Nightclub w/ The Hold Steady
04/05/09 Chicago, IL - Schubas w/ Tallest Man on Earth
04/06/09 St. Louis, MO - Gargoyle w/ The Hold Steady
04/07/09 Iowa City, IA - The Picador w/ The Hold Steady
04/08/09 Omaha, NE - Slowdown w/ The Hold Steady
04/10/09 Boulder, CO - Fox Theatre w/ The Hold Steady
04/11/09 Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge w/ The Hold Steady
04/13/09 Las Vegas, NV - Beauty Bar w/ The Hold Steady
04/14/09 Stateline, NV - Harrah's Tahoe South Shore w/ The Hold Steady
04/15/09 Sacramento, CA - Harlow's w/ The Hold Steady
04/17/09 Seattle, WA - Jules Maes Saloon
04/18/09 Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge w/ Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band
04/20/09 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill
04/21/09 Los Angeles, CA - The Echo
04/22/09 Phoenix, AZ - Modified
04/24/09 Austin, TX - Mohawk
04/25/09 Denton, TX - Rubber Gloves
04/26/09 Nashville, TN - Exit/In
04/27/09 Knoxville, TN - The Pilot Light

2009-02-27T03:25:00.000-08:00

SPANISH DATES ANNOUNCED!!

March 10 - Madrid, Sala Heineken
March 11 - Vigo, La Fabrica De Chocolate
March 12 - Bilbao, Sala Rockstar
March 13 - Barcelona, Mephisto

2008-12-22T13:14:00.000-08:00

02/19/09 Oostende, Belgium - Manuscript
02/20/09 Lille, France - L'Aeronef
02/21/09 Clermont Ferrand, France - Nuits de Alligator @ La Cooperative Club
02/22/09 Bordeaux, France - Le St X
02/24/09 Paris, France - Maroquinerie
02/25/09 Evreux, France - Nuits de Alligator @ L'Abordage
02/26/09 Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso
02/27/09 Groningen, NL - Vera
02/28/09 Den Bosch, NL - W2
03/01/09 Antwerp, Belgium - Trix
03/02/09 Brussel, Belgium - Botanique
03/04/09 Munchen, Germany - Orange House
03/05/09 Leipzig, Germany - NATO
03/06/09 Hannover, Germany - Cafe Glocksee

with The Hold Steady:
03/31/09 Albany, NY - Valentine's
04/01/09 Buffalo, NY - Tralf Music Hall
04/03/09 Urbana, IL - Courtyard Cafe
04/04/09 Bloomington, IN - Jakes Nightclub
04/06/09 St. Louis, MO - Gargoyle
04/07/09 Iowa City, IA - The Picador
04/08/09 Omaha, NE - Slowdown
04/10/09 Boulder, CO - Fox Theatre
04/11/09 Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge
04/13/09 Reno, NV - The Underground **CANCELLED ** RE-Scheduling to VEGAS
04/14/09 Stateline, NV - Harrah's Tahoe South Shore
04/15/09 Sacramento, CA - Harlow's

04/16/09 - May 2009 - The War on drugs Hits the road home alone....

Dates and Venues TBA: San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, LA, Tucson, Austin, Nashville, Chicago

2008-11-19T08:04:00.000-08:00

DECEMBER TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED:

12/09/08 Pontiac, MI - The Pike Room at The Crofoot w/ The High Strung
12/10/08 Rock Island, IL - Huckleberry's Pizza Parlor
12/11/08 Chicago, IL - Schuba's
12/12/08 Bloomington, IN - Bear's Place
12/13/08 Pittsburgh, PA - Brillobox
12/14/08 Brooklyn, NY - Union Hall
12/15/08 New York, NY - Mercury Lounge
12/18/08 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's w/ Joshua Marcus and COMOROS

2008-10-05T13:45:00.001-07:00

...and now the rest of the story:

They should have just started a 35-date European tour as guests of The Hold Steady, who pulled all their shows earlier this week due to the hospitalisation of guitarist Tad Kubler. Instead, Philadelphia’s War On Drugs find themselves stranded in London, where they were probably considering busking as an alternative to starving on the capital’s streets before being added at the last minute to tonight’s Club Uncut bill at the Borderline.

Continued...

I’m sympathetic to their current circumstances and being left on their uppers by the cancellation of the Hold Steady tour and the exposure it would have brought them is no joke in anyone’s language. At the same time, I’m wholly glad they’re here tonight, because what their opening set, a frantic 30 minutes or so, packed from floor to ceiling with moments of startling rapture and abandoned mayhem, is as good as anything I’ve seen all year.

You may have read in reviews of their debut album, Wagonwheel Blues, that WOD’s music occupies an interface between the classic American songwriting of Dylan, Springsteen and Tom Petty and the sonic adventures of The Velvet Underground, say, or My Bloody Valentine.

It’s a notion you may briefly have entertained and them dismissed without hearing the album as surely fanciful. The thing is, the description – especially when you hear them live – isn’t at all far-fetched, begins in fact to feel like it actually undersells a lot of the amazing things they get up to and the fearsome noise of which they are capable, breathtakingly exciting aural landscapes wrought from nothing more apparently than a Rickenbacker, a drummer with the dynamic whack of the young Mitch Mitchell, an acoustic guitar and what looks like an array of wired-up kitchen utensils one of the band must have found at the back of someone’s garage.

They’ve just started “Arms Like Boulders”, which also opens Wagonwheel Blues, when I arrive hot-foot from Pete Molinari’s Uncut promotion at Borders and they are already in full flight, Adam Granduciel, looking beneath a tangle of hair uncannily at times like lost West Coast singer-songwriter Dino Valente, whaling away on a battered acoustic guitar, the band whipping up a firestorm behind him.

You can hear echoes in his voice of Petty, for sure, but the exclamatory phrasing, daring and acute, is more noticeably reminiscent of a Dylan just gone electric and simply buzzing. You can hear Dylan in the following “Taking The Farm”, but here the backing sounds like a demented version of Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, warped, furious, insanely catchy.

As is, you’d have to say, the somewhat more serene drift of “Buenos Aires Beach” they’re playing now, its warm glow an overture to the absolute meltdown of the 10-minute “Show Me The Coast” they play next. Years ago, in Glasgow, I saw Dylan play a version of “Masters Of War”, whose arrangement that night seemed inspired by the Velvet Underground’s “Black Angel’s Death Song”. Tonight, War On Drugs give us a hint of what it might have sounded like if Bob had appeared on “Sister Ray”, whose relentless annihilation is fearsomely replicated.

They end with an equally fierce version of “A Needle In Your Eye #16”, which Granduciel reminds the audience appeared on Uncut’s Let It Roll CD that accompanied “issue 152, the one with Liam or Noel Gallagher, the ugly brother, whoever he is” on the cover.

War On Drugs have been so good that what follows has an almost inevitable air of anti-climax.

alan jones, Editor of UNCUT magazine

2008-10-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

2008-09-17T14:47:00.001-07:00

The War on Drugs LIVE at The Paradiso, Amsterdam, 8/8/08

2008-09-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

The War on Drugs is going back out on the road in October. The Hold Steady requested we open for them on their entire European tour so it took about 16 seconds to decide...We'll also be doing a bunch of Headlining shows on our days off...one of which is our triumphant return to The Windmill in Brixton. More shows should be added in the next few days...
And, of course, to our friends in the states....we'll be coming around very soon..hopefully December.

Also, if you live in one of the beautiful cities below and don't mind us staying with you one night...let us know and you'll get two free passes to the show.

'till then:

September 29 - Academy, Oxford
September 30 - Academy, Manchester
October 1 - ABC, Glascow
October 2 - Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
Ocotber 3 - Norwich Arts center, Norwich (DRUGS HEADLINE)
October 4 - Anson Rooms, Bristol
October 5 - Rock City, Nottingham
October 6 - Pyramids, Portsmouth
October 7 - Windmill, Brixton (DRUGS HEADLINE, with Super Nashwan)
October 8 - Roundhouse, London
October 9 - Nouveau Casino, Paris
October 10 - La Materies, Lille (DRUGS HEADLINE)
October 11 - Knust, Hamburg
October 12 - Luxor, Koln
October 13 - Melkweg, Amsterdam
October 15 - MONO, Oslo (Drugs Headline)
October 16 - Debaser, Stockholm
October 17 - Sticky Fingers, Goteberg
October 18 - Debaser, Malmo w/ Xiu Xiu (DRUGS HEADLINE)
October 19 - Vega, Copenhagen
October 20 - Columbia Club, Berlin
October 21 - WUK, Vienna
October 22 - Ampere, Munich
October 23 - Lokomotiv, Bologna, Italy (Drugs Headline)
October 25 - Heineken Green Space Festival w/ Animal Collective, Valencia

You can still buy "Wagonwheel Blues" RIGHT HERE!! IT RULES!

2008-07-31T14:25:00.000-07:00

Buy "Wagonwheel Blues" HERE!!
YO! The War on Drugs headlining tomorrow night, August 1st, at Union Pool in Brooklyn. Set time is scheduled for 11:30. This is the last US show for a while as we leave for Europe and Beirut next week. First show's in Amsterdam and we'll be riding the high all the way through the uk, france, belgium, ireland and beirut. Check us out at the Green Man festival in South Wales, La Route Du Rock in St. Malo France and the Big Bang fest in Beirut, Lebanon to close out the tour. We'll be heading to Spain for a festival in Later october so we haven't forgot our friends there! Ok...come out to brooklyn tomorrow. Big Band for this one. Just blew the roof off the TLA opening for Spiritualized so check it 0ut.

08/08/08 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
08/09/08 Venlo, Netherlands - Zomerparkfeest
08/10/08 Courcelles, Belgium - La Posterie
08/11/08 London, UK - The Old Blue Last
08/12/08 London, UK - Club Fandango at Dublin Castle
08/13/08 Farnham, UK - The William Cobbett
08/14/08 St. Malo, France - Le Festival du Rock
08/15/08 Crickhowell, South Wales - Green Man Festival
08/16/08 Yeovil, UK - Orange Box
08/17/08 Dublin, Ireland - Crawdaddy
08/18/08 Bristol, UK - Thekla Social
08/20/08 Brixton, UK - Windmill w/ Bowerbirds
08/23/08 Beirut, Lebanon - Big Bang Festival

Good Shit here

Also here

here too

Awesome

2008-06-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

Yo friends!
Wagonwheel Blues is now available! You can buy it from the secretly canadian website or at your local record store (!!!) or a bunch of places online like Amazon...I also saw a few on ebay. Do it!

'Taking the Farm' was the song of the day today on NPR.org and they actually tried to dissect some meaning from it! Niiiice!

Anyway here are some recent reviews to persuade you to head downtown and ask for it.

- http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/13253

- "Philadelphia's War on Drugs have seem to come out of nowhere with an album that’s been in constant rotation on my stereo for the past month. Wagonwheel Blues is an amazing debut, and every time I listen I find different things that I love. At various moments I hear Dylan, Springsteen, the Walkmen, Animal Collective...the list goes on. It’s the perfect amalgamation of classic rock and modern day indie, with the songs to boot. And there’s no throwback or retro here, just all around great rock music. "Arms Like Boulders" opens the record with a wailing harmonica, a wall of guitars, and a Dylan-esque vocal delivery. It is one part-roots rock, one-part indie, and one truly great song. "Taking the Farm" (which we recently featured as our Download of the Week) is a distorted, barnstorming romp of a tune. Easily one of the best songs that I've heard all year, it’ll have you have you jumping around singing, and is sure to put a little spring in your step. Any time "Buenos Aires Beach" comes on the stereo, everybody here at OM immediately thinks of the discordant pop stylings of Animal Collective. I can hear it, but come on...can you be in any better company? Not a bad reference, at all! "There Is No Urgency" starts with a wall of noise, then kicks in like a lost song by NY's very own the Walkmen while "A Needle in Your Eye #16" has a slight Velvet Underground feel, with a repetitious melody and some killer, witty lyrics. Damn, does this album have a bad song? Well, to tell you the truth… not a single one! The War on Drugs have given us one of the best debuts of the year..." - other music, NYC

Upcoming:
July 11th - WXPN Festival in Camden, NJ
July 13th - Mercury Lounge, NYC w/ Titus Andronicus (drugs on first)
July 19th - TBA, philadelphia

August 9-20: European Tour/Festival Dates w/ Spiritualized,Sigur Ros, Magik Markers and more!

2008-05-30T08:19:00.000-07:00

Wagonwheel Blues now available for pre-order!!!

The LP comes with a coupon for downloadable tunes so you can still cruise the strip to it.

New Tour Dates!!

06/07/08 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's - w/Kurt Vile and Ape School

08/08/08 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
08/09/08 Venlo, Netherlands - Zomerparkfeest
08/10/08 Courcelles, Belgium - La Posterie
08/11/08 London, UK - The Old Blue Last
08/12/08 London, UK - Club Fandango at Dublin Castle
08/13/08 Farnham, UK - The William Cobbett
08/14/08 St. Malo, France - Le Festival du Rock
08/15/08 Crickhowell, South Wales - Green Man Festival
08/16/08 Yeovil, UK - Orange Box
08/17/08 Dublin, Ireland - Crawdaddy
08/18/08 Bristol, UK - Thekla Social
08/20/08 Brixton, UK - Windmill w/ Bowerbirds

2008-05-28T12:27:00.001-07:00

2008-05-08T10:46:00.000-07:00

May 14th - IronHorse, Northampton, MA w/ Bishop Allen
May 15th - Middle East downstairs, Boston, MA w/ Bishop Allen
May 16th - Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, w/ Bishop Allen
May 18th - Black Cat, D.C. w/Bishop Allen

May 21 - Grog Shop, Cleveland, W/Blood on the Wall
May 22 - Magic Stick, Detroit, w/ Blood on the Wall
May 23 - Empty Bottle, Chicago, w/ Blood on the Wall

June 7 - Johnny Brendas, Philadelphia, official 'Wagonwheel Blues' Release show

2008-04-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

"it's not often that we totally nerd out and say things like: This album is so well sequenced, because, like, what does that even really mean? It turns out that it means The War on Drugs' upcoming Wagonwheel Blues is JAMMING and also totally Springsteeny and Dylany without getting caught up in all the nostalgia that comes along with taking cues from those dudes. The War on Drugs made a totally serious album, shimmering and sprawling—it's as inspiring as it is exhausting and dense." The Fader

May 5th at Pianos in NYC for the Brooklyn Vegan Party
May 14th - 18th - on tour with Bishop Allen : Northampton, Boston, Brooklyn, DC
May 21, 22, 23 - w/ Blood on the Wall : Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago
June 7th - Philadelphia
August - Europe!
Fall 2008 - More USA and more Europe!

Keep checkin the myspace for new tunes, venues and new dates

2008-04-03T14:34:00.000-07:00

yo so Secretly Canadian reissued the Barrel of Batteries ep (2006) and it's available as a free download from their website. Or if you feel like helpin a sweet dude out...buy it from Apollo Audio for $4. Either way....check it out. If you already have it then download it just to hear the 'new' full band recording of 'Arms like Boulders.' It's a different version than what will appear on the full length and it was recorded by the brothers Cobb and mixed by Brian Mctear. Wagonwheel Blues out soon and a whole lot more after that...

http://www.thefader.com/articles/2008/3/31/freeload-the-war-on-drugs-i-barrel-of-batteries-i-ep
http://theyellowstereo.com/?p=2424
thanks to brother mark for the tips...

2008-03-27T09:12:00.001-07:00

Three new songs from the upcoming Wagonwheel Blues are now posted on the myspace page. A Needle in your Eye #16, Taking the Farm and Arms like Boulders. Dig.

2008-03-19T11:11:00.001-07:00

Thursday March 20th at the Khyber
The War on Drugs Live with Citay (Dead Oceans)

We played a few parties in Austin for sxsw--duo style with granduciel and vile rippin it on guitars and now we're super psyched to jam it for our philly friends. The drugs are super loose right now...in a tight kinda way...so make sure to cruise out.
Full length album, Wagonwheel Blues, will be out in June on Secretly Canadian. Got to meet the whole crew down in austin..man, these guys (and one gal) have got THE SPIRIT! Some sweet tracks from the record will be on myspace soon enough...

2008-02-21T11:28:00.000-08:00

Wagonwheel Blues
Arms Like Boulders
Taking the Farm
Coast Reprise
Buenos Aires Beach
There is no Urgency
A Needle in your Eye #16
Reverse the Charges
Show me the Coast
Barrel of Batteries 2001

March 15th - Austin, TX - Lambert's 12:50pm
March 20th - Philadelphia, PA - Khyber with Citay (Dead Oceans)
April 9th - Philadelphia, PA - North Star Bar

2007-09-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

- Recording is underway for the anticipated full length that's due out sometime in the spring...

- If you would like a copy of the Barrel of Batteries ep from 2006 you can stream it or buy it ($4) from www.apolloaudio.com or you can email adam@thewarondrugs.net if you'd like a tangible one.