Wednesday, Nov 3, 2021 • 24min
The War On Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore (feat. Lucius)
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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 https://songexploder.net/the-war-on-drugs
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Adam Granduciel
Hrishikesh Hirway
Transcript
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Hrishikesh Hirway
00:00
You're listening to Song Exploder where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made, my name is Hrishikesh Hirway.
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Hrishikesh Hirway
01:53
This episode contains explicit language.
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01:56
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 L. A.
Share
02:14
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. Beating like a heart, I'm gonna walk through every doorway, I can't stop, I need some time, I need control, I need your love, I wanna find out everything I need to know.Share
Adam Granduciel
02:46
I'm
Adam
from The War On Drugs
.Share
02:50
We had just had our first child late July of 2019. Without me living here anymore. It started basically as me sitting in the nursing chair and Bruce's room when he was about six weeks old. He just be on his little blanket. I would be in the chair, just strumming an acoustic lightly.
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03:19
And I was just strumming these two, these two chords that were cool. I mean, it wasn't even that exciting, it was just be flat to see in this way that had a nice little vibe to it. And he's making a bunch of sounds.
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03:44
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, you know, I just did a quick drum machine, four on the floor, 808 kick. When I sit down to the mic with my headphones on 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 capture whatever is happening.
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04:18
I go into another world when I had my headphones on, they 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, living on a bug, I keep breathing everything.
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04:51
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.
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05:10
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.
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05:32
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.
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05:56
I liked the vocal melody, I like 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.
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06:15
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 on my cool, and it was thanksgiving, so I was walking into by a like a roasting pan for some turkey that I was gonna overcook because I'm petrified of salmonella.
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06:41
And I'm walking in, I'm like, "oh, let me just grab my headphones and 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.
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07:17
In January of 2020, the band had just come out to
Los Angeles,
and we go to the studio for 14 hours a day and right, mess around, have fun shoot hoops, that's what we love to do. And so Dave
is sitting there and a fold up chair and says "we should work on "I Don't Live Here Anymore"
. I was like, "okay, yeah, maybe, yeah, I guess so".Share
07:43
I don't know why I was so hesitant, I think I just knew that it was gonna 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.
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08:07
But our friend Eric Slick from
Philadelphia
who drums in the band Dr. dog
. 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 gotta make the song around that drum sound.Share
08:32
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 base was in there. And one day it just snapped into focus.
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09:06
And we decided to just bring in
Lucius
, Jess Wolfe
and Holly Laessig. 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.Share
09:36
They've known each other for so long and just musically, they're so connected, that
Jess
doing one thing, Holly's doing this other thing, and they're totally in tune, sonically, but also just mentally, and they're just there.Share
09:52
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 walk into this darkness on our own. I want to find out everything I need to know
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10:17
They did the vocals before I even did my vocals, so the song for a while is just basically no vocals except for their vocals in the chorus. We're all just walk into this darkness on our own, we're all just walk into this darkness on our own, we're all just walk into this darkness on our own.
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10:48
I remember doing all the vocals of 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. It blew up fucking minds.
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11:15
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 actually 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 mind, you know? It's like, you could have gone to sea monster truck rally. So why use Bob Dylan's
, you know?Share
11:44
But remember the second day of those vocal sessions, I came back, I was like, I don't wanna punch that line too, and then I had to be danced
Desolation Row.
Like when we went to see Bob Dylan
, we danced the Desolation Row
, but I don't live here anymore, but I got no place to go.Share
12:14
I had visions of when I had seen them in just specific people that I'd shared that experience with, it meant something to me.
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12:22
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 my 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've 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.Share
Hrishikesh Hirway
12:47
Adams referencing the end of the first stanza from
Bob Dylan
song, Shelter From The Storm
.Share
Adam Granduciel
12:52
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 shelter from the storm".
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12:60
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 storm line because why not? " In a lot of songs of mine, there's always been like, somebody on the other end of the vocals, it's a conversation. I never took her love for granted, you never left me wanting more, but she never recognized me babe, I don't live here anymore.Share
13:40
So, I did a couple of 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 singing along, like under my breath, and every line just fell out of my mouth. Like it never 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.
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14:04
I was just writing about pushing through everything that tries to drag you down, everything that tries to like push you off your path.
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14:15
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 gonna walk through every doorway, I can't stop, I need some time, I need control, I need your love, I wanna find out everything I need to know, I'm gonna say everything that there is to say, although you've taken everything I need away, I'm gonna make it to the place I need to go, we're all just walkin' through this darkness on our own.
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14:57
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 exists 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 gonna 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.
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15:43
I just have this kind of cheap
Kurzweil
electric piano that I bought to demo is and that's like the bell, like the chiming bell tones.Share
16:01
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
Marshall
. And it ended up being like kind of the perfect sound.Share
16:39
I feel like with our music, it's like you want to have a great song, but it's like the sound like, is it one sound? You know, it's not like the bass player is doing this, and the drummers is this. And the rhythm guitars here. No, it's all one pulsing sound.
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Hrishikesh Hirway
17:19
My sense of you before meeting you today was someone who is very meticulous. Is that fair? Do you think that's right?
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Adam Granduciel
17:27
I think there's a difference between being meticulous and being a perfectionist. I don't want things 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.
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17:49
I never wanted anything that someone had to give, I don't live here anymore, I went along with. There's no, it's like a drag it out, it's like I went along and well, but it's not 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".
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18:29
I was sitting there in the headphones, it was on loop for 20 minutes, just one line, and I was just like, "you know what? It's fine, it is what it is". I went along...
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18:50
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.
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19:09
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 that 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.
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19:33
And now here's
I Don't Live Here Anymore
by The War On Drugs
featuring Lucius
in its entirety.Share
Hrishikesh Hirway
19:45
Visit songexploder. 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.
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Hrishikesh Hirway
26:15
This episode was made by me with editing help from Craig Ellie 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 own podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia. fm. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @hrishikeshhirway and you can follow the show @songexploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at song exploder. net/shirt. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway, thanks for listening. Radiotopia
from PRX
.Share
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