The War on Drugs announces a live album ahead of its tour with The National

LOS ANGELES (AP) — For many musicians, a live album is an afterthought — a way to quickly appease insatiable fans or make some easy money. But when Adam Granduciel, the frontman of the anthemic rock band The War on Drugs, set out to make their newest live album announced Wednesday, it was a labor of love that is anything but quick or easy. For “Live Drugs Again,” out Sept. 13, Granduciel wanted to do justice to the ways in which the band has grown, both literally (they’ve added a member since their first live album was released in 2020) and figuratively as musicians who have honed their sound. The album comes in tandem with the start of their co-headlining tour with The National, which kicks off Sept. 12 in New Hampshire. Granduciel spoke with The Associated Press about how performing a song live changes it, whether the band has new music in the pipeline and how he came to play guitar on Beyoncé’s “II Most Wanted.” The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. There are a few songs where it’s four shows spliced together, and part of that too is just having fun with the process. You know, you go into it remembering specific nights, like there are a few songs from a show in Bentonville, Arkansas, which is a town we had never been to in 20 years of being a band. You kind of start there, and then you get so deep into the process of mixing versions and maybe doing a little post-production, like all great live records do. I just wanted to put as much work into it as myself and the band put into our live show, you know, just the amount of time it takes to sort of hone a set, it’s years really. GRANDUCIEL: Well, unlike our first live record, we used a lot of the actual ambient mics that we recorded. But for this one, we used a lot of the actual just source ambient mics so all the crowds are real to that moment. But this one, I think we had like 12 different ambient mics throughout the stage and the venues. Adam Granduciel, the frontman of anthemic rock band The War on Drugs, discusses the group’s newest live album, “Live Drugs Again,” which will be released September 13, saying he’s “really happy with it.” (Sept. 4) AP: Does the anticipation of performing your music inform your songwriting process at all? I mean, if we went back and made a re-recorded “Under the Pressure” the way we play it, it probably wouldn’t be the same thing on a record. But whenever you come off a touring cycle and things reach that next tier from the band dynamically, it always informs the next thing you do. We’re always working, whether it’s mixing live stuff or recording a new song or whatever. AP: How did you end up playing guitar for “II Most Wanted,” the Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus duet? And he called me one day, and I was taking my kid and his friend to an indoor playground in North Hollywood. And he was like, “Do you want to come over tonight and play on this Miley song?” And I was like, “Yeah, definitely.” And then on the way over, he was like, “I think it may be a Beyoncé thing too. And then literally five weeks later, I saw that it was like a Beyoncé-Miley song. And I was in the parking lot on a Saturday night on Hollywood Boulevard at the studio, and it was like really loud. I was like, “Is that the song?” And I was like, “Wait, that is the song I played on.” And I texted Shawn and I was like, “Did they redo my guitar?” He’s like, “No, that’s your guitar.” And I listened to it on the way home in my car and I was like, “This is amazing.” I couldn’t believe it. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://apnews.com/cc905ff7c7cdf1726fb6250488ba0797