War on Drugs: Lost in the Dream

This is a unification album.

The moment it began, I was transported to the summer of 1996, taking summer's Driver's Ed and listening to classic rock with Dave Baugh as we slowly crept around the driving range in a really long Dodge sedan that made parallel parking a nightmare. We were supposed to have the radio set to the AM frequency of the driver's ed instructor who yell instructions at various cars from a tower. But we figured out that there was one area to practice three-point turns that was behind the tower, and it was there that we would flip the radio to classic rock.

Everyone I knew had a period where they switched over from listening to whatever was current to mining classic rock. And listening to classic rock meant that you crossed over into listening to things that your dad listened to, so suddenly there you were, in the car with your dad, singing together to Steve Miller Band.

The sound of Lost in the Dream is the sound of an American rock band from the late 1970s/early 1980s that was either from the Midwest or the East. It's the sound of timeless American rock. It sits with Wilco's Sky Blue Sky in that way. Perhaps the moment that most evokes that sound is the saxophone that comes in at the end of Eyes to the Wind and in general, I cannot stand saxophones (it's the reason why I can't listen to any early Bruce Springsteen album because when Clarence Thomas [obviously not Clarence Thomas but I like to think that Clarence Thomas moonlighted with the Boss while being a lawyer man during the day] starts blowing, I am out), but the saxophone comes in so quietly that I am okay with it while it makes me think that it's about time for me to listen to Foreigner again.

The whole album sounds effortless and timeless and, like Sky Blue Sky, the effortless feeling is because of the guitars. I don't know how to describe it, but the guitarist is not bound by chords, but is operating on the guitar as if it is a piano generating constant melodic lines. That might not even be what is happening on the album. I might be totally wrong. But that's what it sounded like to me and from the very first song, I felt like I was in the hands of professionals who knew that they were doing something great and had the ability to do it.

This is a unification album because it's a contemporary classic rock album that sits astride the multitude of rock genres and time. This is an album for 16 year olds who are tired of boys in skinny jeans making moronic EDM and for 64 year olds who have grown bored with their 1970s LPs and for everyone in between. In a just world (or a world of 30 years ago), this would sell 10 million albums and would inspire countless fathers and sons to reunite, attend concerts together, and play that game of catch that they had put off for years.

It's not a just world.