THE WAR ON DRUGS Head Out On Short End Of Year Tour

Its been six months since Philadelphia’s The War on Drugs released their critically acclaimed “Wagon Wheel Blues” – an album that the San Francisco Weekly claims as “one of this year’s most exciting debuts.” While the praise has been pretty much universal, the fact remains that criminally few people have heard this band. In the office, we find the year’s most perfect A-Side tragically under-appreciated (we dare you to find anything more sprawling, cohesive and hooky).

Having spent the bulk of their time overseas this season, we couldn’t be more pleased to have the band to come back and play on their home turf. Starting December 9th the band will embark on a short tour to finish out the year, and introduce the States to the incredible force that is their live show.

Uncut’s Editor, Alan Jones, perhaps described it best by writing: “I’m wholly glad they’re here tonight, because what their opening set, a frantic 30 minutes or so, packed from floor to ceiling with moments of startling rapture and abandoned mayhem, is as good as anything I’ve seen all year. You may have read in reviews of their debut album, Wagonwheel Blues, that WOD’s music occupies an interface between the classic American songwriting of Dylan, Springsteen and Tom Petty and the sonic adventures of The Velvet Underground, say, or My Bloody Valentine.

It’s a notion you may briefly have entertained and them dismissed without hearing the album as surely fanciful. The thing is, the description – especially when you hear them live – isn’t at all far- fetched, begins in fact to feel like it actually undersells a lot of the amazing things they get up to and the fearsome noise of which they are capable, breathtakingly exciting aural landscapes wrought from nothing more apparently than a Rickenbacker, a drummer with the dynamic whack of the young Mitch Mitchell, an acoustic guitar and what looks like an array of wired-up kitchen utensils one of the band must have found at the back of someone’s garage.”

Dates:
12/09/08 Pontiac, MI – The Pike Room at The Crofoot
12/10/08 Rock Island, IL – Huckleberry’s Pizza Parlor
12/11/08 Chicago, IL – Schuba’s
12/12/08 Bloomington, IN – Bear’s Place
12/13/08 Pittsburgh, PA – Brillobox
12/14/08 Brooklyn, NY – Union Hall
12/15/08 New York, NY – Mercury Lounge
12/18/08 Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s