I Don't Live Here Anymore
| The War on Drugs
I Don't Live Here Anymore
I Don't Live Here Anymore is the fifth studio album by American indie rock band The War on Drugs. It was released on October 29, 2021, through Atlantic Records. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
Show All-
Pitchfork
The fifth album from Adam Granduciel and co. chips away some of their hazier edges in favor of sharper melodies, broadening the borders of the meticulous yet joyously simple sound he has perfected.
-
The Guardian
Recorded in seven studios over three years, Adam Granduciel and co’s latest is a rich, mesmerising affair.
-
Spin
The Philadelphia rockers’ fifth album is the perfect showcase for why people have been so enamored with this band since its inception.
-
Paste Magazine
I Don’t Live Here Anymore is fitting for their newest form: revered musicians with over a decade of quality music under their belts who never lost sight of the prize.
-
Rolling Stone
The War on Drugs Invent Indie Yacht Rock.
-
NME
a soul-stirring epic.
-
PopMatters
One of America’s best rock bands, the War on Drugs aim for the cheap seats on their excellent new album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore.
-
Treblezine
While I Don’t Live Here Anymore might not have the same beautiful, suffocating atmosphere of Lost in the Dream, the added room to breathe on this record is one of its strengths.
-
Guitar
ADAM GRANDUCIEL’S MOST COLOURFUL, ACCESSIBLE AND FOCUSED STATEMENT YET.
-
XS Noize
It feels like a fork in the road for Granduciel on this album, with major change afoot. Despite the clear signs of pain & upheaval with song titles such as ‘Wasted’, ‘Victim’ and ‘Change’, the LP is not without anthemic moments of optimism and hope. It is fitting that the album closes on a track such as ‘Occasional Rain’ with the realisation that periods of joy are always interspersed with sadness - an inescapable truth, and Granduciel has never shied away from speaking and singing this truth. For sure, the brilliance of LaMarca & Granduciel’s heavenly guitar riffs and Dave Hartley’s flawless bass line are very present.
-
Loud and Quiet
Existentially moving through life, there isn’t a tone of melancholy in Granduciel’s vocals as high tempo tracks propel the album forward; instead, I Don’t Live Here Anymore feels like a hand being held out for you to hold, to accept the past and be eagerly thrown head first into an energised present.
-
DIY Magazine
Fans of the songwriter’s lush reinterpretations of his classic rock influences will not be disappointed.
-
Total Ntertainment
Overall, The War On Drugs could have another Grammy to their name with their fifth studio album, “I Don’t Live Here Anymore”. It’s poetic, expertly put together and the band’s instrumentation is the highlight. If you’re a fan of American country-rock with indie influences, this album is for you, however, the album does suffer from a similar sound through which can grow tiresome as the tracks go on. It’s a great effort by the band and I look forward to seeing its success.
-
Slant Magazine
The War on Drugs’s I Don’t Live Here Anymore is a skillful balancing act of pop-rock anthems and experimental soundscapes.
-
The Line of Best Fit
For better or worse, I Don’t Live Here Anymore is The War On Drugs’ achieving perfection.
-
Stereogum
Even if I Don’t Live Here Anymore dwells on things fraying, for the War On Drugs it’s the sound of 10-plus years cohering, of everything coming together.
-
Uncut
An existential shift with super-widescreen views on sextet’s fifth.
-
Sputnik Music
Years from now I’m sure we’ll still be returning to Lost in the Dream as The War on Drugs’ indelible classic, but that doesn’t mean that I Don’t Live Here Anymore won’t possess its own well-deserved audience.
-
Beats Per Minute
I Don’t Live Here Anymore shows The War on Drugs navigating now-templatized stylistics, constructing and delivering songs that are at once earthy and celestial, pop-conscious and contemplative. As mentioned, there’s something ungraspable about their music: referential yet original, derivative yet prototypical, memorable yet oddly irretrievable. Ponderous yet transcendent. A listener is invited to encounter the assorted boundaries of their own preferences, biases, identity – to let those hard lines dissolve.
-
The Skinny
The War On Drugs' fifth studio album is another triumph, and the band's greatest and grandest statement yet.
-
Our Culture
As massive as the album sounds, its fullness points to the band’s growth more than anything else, the kind of change that’s not explicitly talked about: their newfound focus, their tight chemistry, a shared understanding.
-
Stereoboard
It’s the more up-tempo moments that really inject lifeblood into this album. The excellent Wasted sounds like an ode to Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark, while the superb Harmonia’s Dream is comfortably the best thing here. According to Granduciel it was the LP’s problem child, but it’s classic War on Drugs with its chugging beat, addictively simple keyboard hook and stunning guitar soloing.
-
The Young Folks
The War on Drugs offer you a place to escape. A comfy patted seat and pillow for you to lay your head.
-
Riff Magazine
The Philly rockers turn in a lush and expansive 10-track effort, with each song clocking in between four to nearly seven minutes long. 9
-
The AU Review
Doing what they have done over and again, The War On Drugs know what they can do as a band and know they can do it well. With music as good as their name, I Don’t Live Here Anymore is just another example of why the band has been so successful for so long and are more than likely to continue doing so on future releases.
-
Glide Magazine
I Don’t Live Here Anymore, pushes the groups sound as much as it can, while staying conceptually consistent and rewarding. While Granduciel remains at his peak songwriting and the band remains consistently original, its clear that’s not enough, this record sounds like its breaking itself open just so it can move forward, as urgent as Lost in The Dream felt.
-
Northern Transmissions
I Don’t Live Here Anywhere doesn’t have quite the emotional power of Lost in the Dream or the precision of A Deeper Understanding. Sometimes, the need for everything to hit at once can cause some aspects to get lost in the process, like the baritone sax that keeps popping up in the liner notes but which too often escapes notice on the album. But The War on Drugs continue to make the classic feel timeless and the earnest feel earned.
-
Under the Radar Magazine
While some may miss the long extended jams and ambient leanings of songs like “Thinking of a Place,” I Don’t Live Here Anymore is truly successful as an arena-ish rock record. It’s perhaps their most accessible record, yet never sacrifices the core elements that have made The War on Drugs one of the greatest rock groups of the last decade.
-
Vinyl Chapters
Ultimately, despite I Don’t Live Here Anymore not being exactly in line with my own tastes, I don’t think there’s anything terrible about it. I can understand its appeal, it’s not a bad album – I just didn’t like it.
-
AllMusic
I Don't Live Here Anymore is a warmer, friendlier reading of the sound that could feel impenetrable on the War on Drugs' last album. On top of the more accessible production, this record also boasts some of Granduciel's most immediate songs, making it some of the best work from a band with a near-spotless track record.
-
Louder Than War
The War On Drugs enter the new decade with an album, securing their pop status.
-
Music Matters Media
For any fans of mellow but heartfelt loud/quiet adult rock, I Don’t Want Live Here Anymore will no doubt live in their playlists this winter and beyond.
-
Epigram
This is a new beginning for The War On Drugs, and the record hits more than it misses. If they do keep making songs as brilliantly life affirming as ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’, then I’ll keep dancing and singing along until the dust settles.
-
Irish Examiner
He sounds as if he’s ready to hang up his hat and try something new – which chimes with the overall sensibility of a record about growing older and seeing your hometown change. Should that be the case, War On Drugs fans will be encouraged to learn that he has signed off with perhaps the band’s finest album yet.
-
musicOMH
It may take a few listens for this album’s charms to fully reveal itself, and some may find the apeing of classic rock greats a bit wearying, but overall, I Don’t Live Here Anymore is a solid addition to The War On Drugs canon, and the full-on embrace of heartland rock means they may well find a whole new audience with this album.
-
Record Collector Magazine
The dichotomy at the heart of The War On Drugs’ sonic world – the classicism of the songwriting paired with the diligent .
-
Clash Magazine
A perfect companion for these cold and introspective nights.
-
Hotpress
Even when the throwback sounds feel almost too familiar, there’s a charisma and a power at the heart of the approach that’s difficult to resist. Just like Granduciel’s ‘80s icons – who were capable of pulling something oddly triumphant out of the surrounding despair – I Don’t Live Here Anymore finds The War On Drugs expertly straddling the line between joyful release and bittersweet nostalgia.
-
Belwood Music
I Don’t Live Here Anymore isn’t another iconic cultural cornerstone, but it is a damn fine record. Proof that their past brilliance was no fluke and their canonisation as the next Great American Band was well deserved. As great as it is to hear their hallmarks in the work of other artists, its just not a patch on the real deal.
-
The Firenote
As expected, I Don’t Live Here Anymore continues The War on Drugs’ legacy of pristine studio recordings, delivering lush, picturesque soundscapes in compelling songs with lyrics that speak to the yearning for fulfillment in a world where there are more obstacles to human flourishing than we dare to name. There’s something reassuring and comforting in those reliable chord progressions, the piano’s gentle melodic phrasing, the soaring guitar sounds reaching for the sky, and echoes of rock’s earlier triumphs given new life through the soulful rendering of Granduciel & Co. The War on Drugs continues to triumph.
-
No More Workhorse
This collection is not really breaking new ground for this band, other than it’s probably their most synth-filled album. Yes, Adam Granduciel really needs to get over himself, but I suspect their legion of fans are ready for more of this. You should be too.
-
Spectrum Culture
There's opportunity for change, it seems, even if that change feels dangerous. Right now the War on Drugs sounds like they're in that very spot, willing to navigate to somewhere a little new, but hesitant to do anything too bold.
-
KXSU
I Don’t Live Here Anymore, The War On Drugs’ newest studio album, released on Oct. 29th, delivered for me. Although the band’s growth is evident on the record, there is that familiar–and distinctly American–sound that is very reminiscent of the band’s previous records, especially the 2017 album A Deeper Understanding. With twangy, echoey vocals which are often referencing rivers, backroads and other rural landscapes to the predictable slow-burn ballad. But despite the (dare I say) country rockness of it all, the lyrics are consistently and dependably rich. They are emotional, heavy, and deeply tied to universal human experiences of pain.
-
The Post Calvin
Granduciel and the rest of the band clearly put in a grueling amount of time and effort to make this album, taking great care to give us their best work. It paid off and more.
-
The Needle Drop
The War on Drugs' heartland rock sound is more direct than ever on I Don't Live Here Anymore, with Granduciel's vocals and writing not always up to the task.
-
Flood Magazine
For I Don’t Live Here Anymore, the band’s first studio album since 2017’s Grammy-winning A Deeper Understanding, the Philadelphia-based ensemble have found a fashion in which to smooth over their rougher complexities, heighten their feel for punchy melody, and craft a record that’s oddly happy and broadly familial in a time of general cholera.
-
The Indiependent
This is comfort music and for something sounding so derivative, the songs possess an unfathomable quirkiness enabling him to largely get away with it … almost as if he’s hiding in plain sight. One thing is certain, with UK Arena dates planned for the new year, the voluminous I Don’t Live Here Anymore will no doubt effortlessly permeate those cavernous spaces.
-
The Irish Times
I Don’t Live Here Anymore is a turning point for The War On Drugs towards a more structured sound. While you’d miss the indulgence of the odd 10-minute track, these tighter tunes will have even the weariest of legs upstanding.
-
At the Barrier
As a pure listening experience the whole of I Don’t Live Here Anymore is a sheer delight with this ultra tight unit working at their very best.
-
Far Out Magazine
That’s what I Don’t Live Here Anymore provides a fantastically produced, inedibly performed, occasionally transcendent work of ’80s-indebted synth-rock. Is it as emotionally affecting as some of their previous albums? I would argue no, but when it does hit those notes of loneliness and uncertainty, they hit as powerfully as any words that Granduciel has ever put to page. Is it yet another indie rock musician paying respect to the once-maligned, now-beloved style of peak synthesisers-era new wave? You bet. Is there still a distinctive touch from Granduciel that makes it quintessential, unmistakably The War on Drugs? Absolutely.
-
No Ripcord
From Old Skin to Harmonia’s Dream, I Don’t Live Here Anymore has plenty of new War on Drugs classics that will sit comfortably next to Red Eyes and Strangest Thing on a setlist. Still, the album’s best moment comes when Granduciel attempts to turn his pristine, formless sense of bigness into a timeless chorus, which we find on the album's immaculate title track.
-
QRO Magazine
While the hipster crowd might feel that I Don’t Live Here Anymore is too mainstream (though hipsters seem to be grabbing for more & more popular appeal stuff these days…), that’s not the direction here. The War On Drugs are reviving popular rock for the twenty-first century.
-
The Arts Fuse
So the album is not so much a step forward as a distillation of what The War on Drugs has always done well. The band is paring back some of its bells and whistles and changing up some of the usual atmosphere. The result is a welcome excursion into the tried-and-true.
-
Live 4Ever
I Don’t Live Here Anymore is a record of fulfillment, written by a man who’s quietly risen to a fame he’s not sure he wants. It’s also a reminder that values becoming lost in this century’s technological group mindfuck – empathy, forgiveness, love – still make for just as compelling a subject matter as anything else.
-
In Review Online
Rather than the storied canon that War on Drugs pulls inspiration from and once seemed poised to enter, IDLHA simply recalls the superior War on Drugs music that preceded it.
-
Dork
It’s great to have The War On Drugs back; ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’ is more than a return to form, it’s a powerful and ambitious leap to the future.
-
Echoes and Dust
It’s just as well, because if you only give it a cursory listen, you may miss out on some fantastic songs. They need repeat plays to seep into your consciousness. You need to digest them slowly, absorb the little nuances of the structures, and revel in the glory of the detail. That’s what makes The War On Drugs so special, I know I have probably done them some form of injustice by referencing the 80s artists and sounds, but there is no denying they base their sound on another era.
Rate This Album and Leave Your Comments