I’m always checking up on Pitchfork‘ s very rarely updated “Best New Music” selections (yes, they are extremely picky), and their latest recommendation is the stunning new album Slave Ambient by The War On Drugs. I was listening to it last night as my friends and I prepared for our second big camping weekend of the summer (yes, I know it should be camping trip #10, but I’m a lazy shit). When I was just a young country bumpkin in the Ottawa Valley, the wild kids sitting in the back of my bus would always pass cassette tapes of music to Joey, the best damn yellow school bus driver in the entire world. The top two most-played musicians on my morning commute were Steve Earle and Tom Petty, and as I was listening to Slave Ambient I was sent spinning back to those years between September 1980 and June 1995 when I would spend an average of 1 hour a day (30 minutes each way from home to school and back again) listening to the music of the day. Tom Petty always reminds me of my carefree younger years, and The War On Drugs has that very same DNA fused with the zeitgeist of 2011. Take a listen for yourself and you might agree with me on how timeless their sound is. And who knows — maybe some day if I ever have kids they’ll be riding on their own yellow school bus listening to the amazingness that is The War On Drugs. Fingers crossed.
You can follow The War On Drugs on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, as well as their website TheWarOnDrugs.net. You can also stream the entire album for free by visiting The Line Of Best Fit. Check out “Baby Missies” below, one of my favorite offerings from TWOD:
