LOS ANGELES (AP) — For many musicians, a live album is an afterthought — a way to quickly appease insatiable fans or make some easy money.
But when Adam Granduciel, the frontman of the anthemic rock band The War on Drugs, set out to make their newest live album announced Wednesday, it was a labor of love that is anything but quick or easy.
For “Live Drugs Again,” out Sept. 13, Granduciel wanted to do justice to the ways in which the band has grown, both literally (they’ve added a member since their first live album was released in 2020) and figuratively as musicians who have honed their sound. So he combed through about 100 hours of recordings from their shows and even spliced different parts of the same songs together.
The album comes in tandem with the start of their co-headlining tour with The National, which kicks off Sept. 12 in New Hampshire. Granduciel spoke with The Associated Press about how performing a song live changes it, whether the band has new music in the pipeline and how he came to play guitar on Beyoncé’s “II Most Wanted.”
The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.