The Super High Quality Podcast

Over 5 days in March 2018, during a short break in the band’s heavy touring schedule, Adam Granduciel took bassist Dave Hartley and multi-instrumentalist Anthony LaMarca to an Upstate New York studio.  Decamping to Outlier Studios with Philadelphia friend and engineer Nick Krill, the four quickly realized that the session was becoming more productive than a typical demo session.  With the added focus provided by the remote setting (immortalized on the cover of the new album I Don’t Live Here Anymore), the sweet “engine room” of this stripped-down configuration of The War On Drugs, set the course for the development of Adam’s next batch of songs.  In Part 1 of this season’s SHQ Podcast, Adam, Dave, Anthony, and Nick discuss their time at Outlier and revisit the four songs that were uncovered as the 3-year journey to IDLHA began.

Host: Dominic East

Guests:  Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Nick Krill

Four years since their last studio album, The War On Drugs have just released I Don’t Live Here Anymore, the follow-up to their Grammy-winning best rock album A Deeper Understanding.   Season 2 of the Super High Quality Podcast is a four-part audio documentary that tells the story of the players, studios, engineers, songcraft, and happy accidents that define the 10 songs on the band’s new album.  Told through casual conversations with band members and their collaborators, and featuring unreleased recordings, guitar tech Dominic East tracks the album’s progress from the earliest demo sessions in 2018, through the final full-band recording sessions in 2019, and finally inside the summer 2021 rehearsals that marked the band member’s post-quarantine reunion after 18 months apart.   

With episodes set for release in January 2022 to coincide with The War On Drugs’ tour in support of IDLHA, season 2 of the Super High Quality Podcast picks up where we left the band in the fall of 2020 as they were poised to release LIVE DRUGS.

With studio sessions put on hold and their new studio album postponed, The War On Drugs decided instead to release LIVE DRUGS.  In Part 4 of The Super High Quality Podcast the band members share their individual experiences under lockdown and the ways the experience informed the decision to punctuate this point in The War On Drugs’ history with the release of a live album.   From sanitizer-insanity to anticipation for a return to live performance with “David Lee Roth kicks”, the band reflects on an extraordinary year.

Host: 
Dominic East

Guests: 
Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Craig McQuiston

Perhaps no song in The War On Drugs’ catalog embodies the “sound” of the band as much as “Under The Pressure”.   Part 3 of The Super High Quality Podcast, digs deep inside this ambient journey.  From the improvised sonic stew that developed into an alternative song intro, to the iconic sample drop, through to the tension and release created by the mid-song breakdown, and culminating in the indelible image of the illuminated audience when the song kicks back in for the driving two-chord climax, “Pressure” is the centerpiece of the band’s live show.  The band and key members of their road crew, discuss their individual roles and how the interplay between each of these jobs converges to define every unique performance of this epic song.   The band also discusses how a casual mid-tour gear purchase changed this song forever, or at least for now.  “Under The Pressure” is the penultimate track on the fourth side of LIVE DRUGS.

Host: 
Dominic East

Guests: 
Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Bob Strakele, Laurence Eaves, Matthew Walsh, Ben Silverstein

Connecting with a classic Warren Zevon album after relocating to Los Angeles where the band was recording 2017’s Grammy-winning A Deeper Understanding, Adam Granduciel presented Zevon’s classic  “Accidentally Like A Martyr” as a song the band might try to cover.  In Part 2 of The Super High Quality Podcast, The band discusses in painful detail, a less than auspicious debut performance for a private LA audience which happened to include the song’s original producer, Jackson Browne.  That performance aside, the song went on to become a mainstay of their live show throughout their  2017-2018 tours, and the band reveals the ways this song continues to influence their approach to songwriting and performance.  “Accidentally Like A Martyr” is a featured track on the album, LIVE DRUGS.

Host: 
Dominic East

Guests: 
Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Bob Strakele, Laurence Eaves

“Eyes To The Wind” was a standout track on The War On Drugs’ 2014 album Lost In The Dream and quickly became a crowd favorite during its live shows.  In Part 1 of our Super High Quality Podcast, the band tries to dissect exactly how the arrangement was reinvented when leader Adam Granduciel pushed the band to find their way through a somewhat spontaneous new acoustic version onstage in Copenhagen in 2017.  Possibly the result of questionable venue catering, and certainly inspired by the crowd, the band succeeded in the reinvention by reconnecting with each other onstage during that performance.   A mature acoustic version of “Eyes To The Wind”, affectionately now dubbed “Copenhagen Wind”, is featured on the new live album, LIVE DRUGS.

Host: 
Dominic East

Guests: 
Adam Granduciel, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca, Jon Natchez, Craig McQuiston

In a year without concerts, The War On Drugs are set to release LIVE DRUGS on their own Super High Quality Records.  In this podcast, guitar tech and band confidant, Dominic East, listens as the band talks casually about how they arrived at the performances and the decision to release their new live album.