No, I’m not talking about that war, which is tantamount to a war on the people. I am talking about the band – The War On Drugs. Had it not been for the sage advice of my younger brother Sam I would never have heard of this band. Now that I have had the chance to listen through their albums, all I can say is this band is drips with artistic, musical, and lyrical excellence. If you are a fan of Bob Dylan, especially his later collaborations with Daniel Lanois (e.g. Time out of Mind), you are going to dig The War On Drugs layered tracks that blend old-school devotion to the craft with a cutting-edge sensibility. That said, sometimes there are songs that hit like a carpet bomb of beauty with an incandescence that is so radiant it aches. Instead of waxing rhapsodic, I’ll cut to the chase here – the lyrics to the track ‘Strangest Thing’  on their recently released album A Deeper Understanding that hit me like a sledgehammer, here’s a sample:

I recognize every face

But I ain’t got everything I need

If I’m just living in the space between

The beauty and the pain

It’s the strangest thing

Here’s the track in full, enjoy: