Wednesday, January 11, 2012

The War on Drugs Bring "Missiles" to Fallon

(Part two in an 11 part series to spotlight "Feller's Albums De L'annee" Unlike all those other bloggers, I refuse to evaluate the year until it's over. Also, I got kind of lazy in December. Full disclosure, you know? Enjoy...)

<embed width="600" height="361" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" src="http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid1089.photobucket.com/albums/i359/dg11469/January 9 2012 - January 15 2012/thewarondrugsfallon.mp4">

The War on Drugs hit up Jimmy Fallon last night to play "Baby Missiles," one of the tracks from last year's great Slave Ambient. I caught them at The Black Cat in Washington, D.C., last August and they filled a small room with rock and roll while the tightly packed crowd jumped and danced. The steady stream of PBR helped a bit too.

I'm partial to their first album, Wagonwheel Blues, just because it's great, but Slave Ambient builds on the airy rock and frontman Adam Granduciel's Dylan-like drawl and delivers on exactly what is great about that first record. Singing about freedom and the road and strange reactions to people, you (or I, obviously) get the feeling of being on the road, watching America crawl by through a bus or train window, as if running from or to something. And there is a lot to find comforting in that kind of rock album. Maybe I'm just itching for that kind of road trip. Which doesn't change how good the album is anyway.

Before hitting that show, though, I wasn't convinced enough to spread the word. The fact is, they jam, letting the songs fly, just as they do on Fallon's stage, with the help of ?uestlove there. If they come through a town I'm in, and I'm not required to see be somewhere else, I plan to occupy a space in front of the stage they're on. In the case of "Baby Missiles," I'm especially a fan of the harmonica. And that guitar sound during the solos. Mmmmmm. Good stuff.

Buy Slave Ambient at Amazon. (It's only five bucks and worth every penny or more. Go buy it!)

The Jimmy Fallon clip is thanks to Some Kind of Awesome, a blog all of ya'll should be reading.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

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