The problem with talking to musicians about music is that you can end up talking about anything but. Interviews become about about rock star beefs or who they’re dating, when all you really want to know is: “Why do your songs make my heart swell up until it feels like it’s going to burst?” I mean, is there a secret chord or something?
Adam Granduciel, who records as The War On Drugs, has had at least one weird rock star beef (with noted asshole Mark Kozelek) and is dating a genuine celebrity (Krysten Ritter, latterly of Breaking Bad, currently of some iteration of the interminable Marvel universe) but if we’re going to find out he writes music to make the heart swell then we’re going to have to find out how his desire to become an painter led to him crisscrossing America, how he learned to live with his anxiety and, in the end, what he hears when he’s listening for that special moment. But before all that, the first thing you should know about him is that he’s the sort of guy who’s so obsessed with the way sound is recorded that he collects studio T-shirts.
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 