We’ll be up front and to the point, The War on Drugs are easily one of the best live rock bands of our generation. This past weekend at Austin City Limits, the band confounded that fact with a borderline spiritual performance of their greatest hits, playing to new fans and old. Please, let us tell you all about it in our review below.

If there’s one thing that is for certain, it’s that The War on Drugs have certainly nailed that “signature” sound that makes them, them. This last weekend, we hurried over to the T-Mobile Stage at Zilker Park for what would ultimately be one of our favorite performances of the weekend. Led by Adam Granduciel, as well as one of the best bands in the game, they led us to glory with some of their best hits off of records like Lost in the Dream, A Deeper Understanding, and a ton of newer hits off their latest, I Don’t Live Here Anymore. Having been sort of lukewarm on their newest album, everything fell perfectly into place once we witnessed it in a live setting. The songs breathed a new life and everything clicked as it should, a hallmark staple of what makes being a live band so great.

Although their set was criminally short at just over an hour, they still managed to immerse the crowd into a frenzy of air guitar playing lunatics, screaming at the top of our lungs with the songs we knew, and just downright having the best time you can have at a show. There’s so much word out now about The War on Drugs being “dad rock”, which we think is sort of a lame term, however we can see that it definitely takes more of a mature ear to get into their style of music. They kicked things off with some of the faster songs like “An Ocean in Between the Waves” and “Red Eyes”, but as the set went on, they scaled it back to the more intimate and raw sounding singles, the ones we prefer anyway.

Looking around, you could feel and sense the immense emotions coming through viewers of all ages. The last time we saw them was at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, Netherlands and it was a life changing experience. We’re beyond happy we got to experience it once again and if the band happens to make their way to a city near you, buy a ticket immediately.

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