I Don't Live Here Anymore By The War On Drugs Is The Best Song Of 2021. Here's Why.
The Cautious But Unrelenting Optimism Of Adam Granduciel And Co Provided A Crucial Counter Narrative Against A Truly Frightening Year
Tristan Young @talltristan
In 2021 it all seemed like we were a little stuck. Rather than moving on from the myriad collective traumas of the previous year, their echoes diffused and permeated through our lives with demoralizing persistency. Instead of putting this pandemic behind us, we had to contend with the myopia and malignant narcissism of anti vaxxers that paved the ways for new covid variants to ensure this lasts in perpetuity. Hopes of hyper partisanship abating after the 2020 election were dashed early in the year with an insurrection that violently disrupted America’s transition of power for the first time ever; months later and we are still discovering the depths of the misanthropy behind it and the attendant consequences. Once in a lifetime natural disasters that brought the calamitous reality of climate change into shocking relief have been normalized and embedded into the quotidian experiences of our every day lives over and over this past year. Rather than an anomalous stretch of existential horror, we seem trapped in the after effects of 2020, unable to annex ourselves from its purgatory, ensnared within an unending and inexorable decline. It feels like we can’t move forward, that this is all there is, and all there is going to be for a good long while.
The music of 2021 processed, contended with, and reacted to this dystopian milieu in the expected and predictable ways for the most part. Admittedly, the superlative escapism or commercial nihilism of pop music seemed less salient this year, especially compared to the more abstract and experimental offerings. Music by groups like Low or Spirit Of The Beehive interacted with and explored the creative opportunities that exist within resigning ourselves to a world subsumed by information warfare and enmity. At times it seemed like the aperture for social commentary had narrowed to the point where only interpretations of animus, entropy, or despair could yield any kind of noteworthy result. There were of course moments of hyperbolic bravado and escapist dance floor ecstasy from the likes of Illuminati Hotties, or Mr Twin Sister. Yet they at times seemed not so much detached but avoidant, even immunized from what 2021 was all about. If there were any vectors to rhetorically engage with what the hell happened this year from an optimistic perspective, they were few and far between. I Don’t Live Here Anymore by The War On Drugs is the best song of the year because it actually managed to do just that, better than any thing else.
It’s not just thematic, even from a schematic and production perspective I Don’t Live Here Anymore serves as a salve, a curative measure to bolster our atrophied sense of dynamism and alacrity. Whereas 2021 was a flummoxing morass of anxiety and immiseration, rendering any hope for a future more and more unclear, the song is redolent in its crystalline and shimmering clarity. Anachronistic organ warbles convey a sense of weathered nostalgia initially, but when the twin streams of melodic and rhythm guitar materialize, the aesthetic reorients to a beautiful alchemy of streamlined slickness and enveloping warmth. It’s surely the apotheosis of meticulous audio design this year. The choked up kernels of tightening power chords contract and expand like a series of consecutive cathartic expressions, each one serving as therapeutic and galvanizing all at once. It has a pearlescent resonance, casting the song’s fragile optimism in something sturdy and graceful, enough to weather the times.
Adam Granduciel sounds weathered indeed, now as much as ever as he embodies the literal and figurative emaciation that we have all experienced in one form or another. “I was lying in my bed, a creature void of form”, he marries the lethargy of such a large-scale regression the last 12 months have wrought with a more abstract existentialism that demands interrogation far more than we would prefer these days. Under such pernicious auspices it’s easy to retreat into the comforting superficialities of nostalgia. He thinks about the good old days, listening to Bob Dylan, and a past romance; well aware that his recollections are increasingly compromised like a Sisyphean construct that becomes less and less of the original but wholly complete to him nevertheless. We don’t want to admit it, but we all know deep down how injurious and toxic this is. Hiding in the muddled obscurity of our own memories, increasingly detached from the present. Grunduciel, describes the ostensible comfort these memories afford, but earnestly seeks to avoid it. “I don’t live here anymore”, he announces with a clear sense of momentum, but also a hint of defiance.
He employs the language of an archetypal adventurer, but purposes the acumen towards something more pathological. He knows his strident gestures towards self-improvement and mental clarity are fraught with unease and a more immediate sense of instability, but he is resolute nonetheless- triumphantly so, even. “I wanna find out everything I need to know”, he sings, emboldened by a desire for discovery while just as cognizant of how ugly it can all get, “although you’ve taken everything I need away, I’m gonna make it to the place I need to go”. Grunduciel eagerly takes on the persona of the wandering vagabond, codifying the visage even into the eponymous album’s cover, yet he is clearly being rhetorical here. He willingly engages with the notion that he may fail miserably as he wonders, “is life just dying in slow motion”, but he pairs that with the possible risk/reward outcome that only comes with trying, “or getting stronger everyday”. Grunduciel wants to become unrecognizable, a changed person, if only to reassert some semblance of individual manifest destiny in a world that has become increasingly anathematized from such possibilities.
Those possibilities, on a sub textual level, crescendo in unison with the background vocal contributions of the Brooklyn based quintet Lucius. The textural fidelity in pairing Grunduciel’s gravely baritone with their fervent and lavish harmonies is remarkable. The subtle shifting from their role as primarily back up to forging ahead as the track’s pursuant momentum creates a thematic bond of solidarity between them and Grunduciel, far surpassing their seemingly aesthetic purpose. Their vocal inclusion, unvarnished or diluted by the rhetorical pummelling Grunduciel contextualizes himself within, encodes a more tangible sense of progress than he could achieve on his own. It’s fitting that the line, “we’re all just walking through this darkness on our own”, is sung by them together in perfect synchronicity. Yet the two vocal sets are so dialectic you can clearly grasp the unique fidelity of each, as to ensure the idea behind the lyrics is more broadly canvased.
I Don’t Live Here Any More, doesn’t luxuriate in superlatives or hyperbolic expressions. It’s more content to cultivate one small victory, trying to forge an axiomatic relationship with our psychology as much as possible. It’s less flashy but that’s an extension of the song’s intrinsic ethos. None of this is easy, all of this is hard, and if this year has taught us anything, it’s never really going to stop. We may never move beyond the prodigious factors that sure make it seem like this is the beginning of the end. But in 2021, understanding what it takes to even try is as grandiose a victory as we are going to get, and maybe even deserve. Grunduciel says he has no place to go, but that doesn’t stop him from leaving anyways.