Right Before The Moon

The War On Drugs “An Ocean in Between the Waves”

I don’t drive and I’m not in cars very often anymore, so I haven’t really had a chance to hear this song in ideal conditions. This is such a car song – it’s all forward momentum and lateral progression and restrained longing, like someone found a way to fuse Bob Dylan and Dire Straits to Neu! and Kraftwerk. The only other thing quite like this is Wilco’s “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” but that’s a lot more dramatic and gritty. This is remarkably clean smooth, to the point that it’s actually sorta surprising that a record like this is getting embraced by indie rock people. But indie people are typically major introverts, and boy is this ever a song you can just recede into and shut out the world as it goes right by you.

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