“Thinking of a Place”

“Thinking of a Place”

“Thinking of a Place” marks a subtle, focussed return from the War on Drugs. Stretching out across 11 minutes, it is less a reintroduction than a reimmersion into Adam Granduciel’s spectral Americana. Nearly every aspect of the song is tenuous, either disappearing or located just beyond our grasp. Granduciel sings, “Love is like a ghost in the distance out of reach.” He warns us, “There’s a darkness over there/But we ain’t going.” He laments a lover who “vanished in the night” while he gazes at the Missouri River. The music shifts between ambient passages of synth and fuzzed-out…