Live Review: The War On Drugs @ Riverstage

There’s a certain archetypal sense of either magic, madness, or melancholia that can be attributed to an artist’s musical repertoire, but rare is it that all three effectively melt together. What sort of music would that even sound like? The answer, like most things, materialised on a mundane Saturday night in the form of Australian siren Indigo Sparke. After playing a series of ethereal songs from her 2022 album Hysteria, produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner, the transfixed souls that had found themselves lying in the grass suddenly weren’t sure what to do or how to act once her set was over.

If any band was questioned whether they’d be up to the task of shattering the requiem held in the absence of Sparke, then Spoon’s response would be “hold my beer.” From the outset, the experimental art rock quintet hailing from Texas injected the night with a series of stark, groovy fuzz melodies that somehow perfectly reflected the image illustrated in the title of their recent album: Lucifer On The Sofa. The songs fabricate a peculiar invitation – lounge on the softness for a while, and the longer you stay the darker the world becomes. Or as Neil Young would put it, going out of the blue and into the black.

Black veils (no not Black Veil Brides, I know that’s where your mind jumped to) were swept up and the stage transformed into a double platform rigged with probably just shy of a billion amps, as well as a plethora of instruments. The War On Drugs were scheduled for a two-hour set, and as the first notes of Old Skin sounded beneath the stars, no one could argue that they weren’t well-equipped for a jam sesh that all of Brisbane could hear.

Frontman Adam Granduciel beamed. “It’s been a long time! Five or six years? Thanks for sticking with us tonight, I got a crazy virus running through my body. I’m on ‘roids, I’m juicing backstage …got 2 IV drips …can’t hear anything. It’s what we do to put this show on for everyone here. We love you it’s the least we can do.” He was met with thunderous applause, and it spurred him on. “Oh yeah, I even tie-dyed my own merch.”

All the lights dimmed, and the world was dark until cobalt blue LEDs illuminated the stage perimeter, turning the floor into a carpet of ice. Fan-favourite track Pain from their 2017 album A Deeper Understanding started to play, and everyone went wild. “Look what the humidity is doing to my hair am I right? You guys live with it.” Granduciel cackled. “The ‘roids are kicking in! We really are appreciative though, it’s our fifth time in ten years and every time is better than the last.”

“Let’s go!” Someone shouted from the mosh.

The vocalist didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah? Why don’t you go! Justifiably, I think that’s the guy I saw at the airport today and I said, ‘get away from me I have Covid.’ I may or may not I don’t know but I appreciate you saying hi.” Everyone laughed. “Stay away from me,” he added, grinning.

Strangest Thing saw the potential of what a tasty sax and synth duo can accomplish and crafted it into something tangible. For a few too short minutes, Jon Natchez and Robbie Bennett led the crowd through a psychedelic dreamscape imbued with raw nostalgia and soaring chord progressions. Granduciel made sure to note that what we’d just experienced was a glimpse into an otherworldly space, and he brought everyone back across the veil to the earth-side. “Next time it’s going to be a completely different scene – bench pressing amps, alcohol free, just protein shakes. Get ready.”

That might seem like a far cry, but the band launched into the most anticipated song of the night, Red Eyes, and judging by the reaction of the mosh, bench pressing amps wasn’t just a joke, it was truly on the cards. People scrambled onto the shoulders of others, ripping off their shirts in an attempt to physically ascertain and illustrate the freedom you feel when this song starts to play. You feel like you want to fly, but you can’t. So, the next best thing is to let go of all and any inhibitions.

If ‘letting go of all and any inhibitions’ isn’t a familiar phrase rooted in your day-to-day vocab, all you need to do is take a leaf out of drummer Charlie Hall’s handbook and watch that man ascend to a completely different dimension during the instrumental build-up of Lost In The Dream’s first track Under The Pressure. In what was arguably the pinnacle of the entire set, the band’s ability to capture the essence of the human experience in eight minutes and fifty-two seconds is but one of a myriad of reasons as to why they’re as successful as they are.

In a final beautiful moment, the band singled out an audience member who’d had a recent birthday and played his favourite song. The story however, is never that simple. Granduciel elaborated for us: “A couple of shows in a row we didn’t play this song. I don’t know why. I thought you were going to be at the first Sydney show, so I played it that night for you I even added a little note on my paper, but you weren’t at that one… and then technically we didn’t play it in Melbourne because I couldn’t sing it.”

Another voice from the mosh. “No, your guitar was out of tune!”

Granduciel burst into laughter, turning to bassist David Hartley. “My guitar was out of tune! See, he might’ve not even been at the show… he might’ve found another reddit forum. Ah you’ve brought up a real demon right now, we just got over it.”

And that was how he introduced the final song of the night. “Sometimes you need something to push against. This is Occasional Rain.” He giggled. “In tune.”

The wonderful thing about a band like this, is that even if they didn’t play the song you’d been hoping for, at the end of the night you still leave the show in raptured awe because any song you hear is any song powerful enough to send you into oblivion.

A lovely, certainly-not-sober gentleman who’d been yelling all night for them to play one particular song alas did not have his wish granted – and yet this is indeed a positive thing, because halfway through the night he turned around and said: “If they play Thinking of a Place I will shit my pants, and that’s a promise.”

Never had we been more grateful that a truly brilliant song wasn’t brought to the live stage that night. The Lord works in mysterious ways, but he certainly does work.