And the Hello and

our

welcome to

welcome to Hello and welcome to So de Jerker on songwriting. This is Simon, joined as always by Brian, and our guest for episode 215

is frontman, guitarist, co-founder and principal songwriter of celebrated, critically acclaimed

Grammy-winning US indie band The War on Drugs.

Just a couple of weeks ago the band released their excellent fifth studio album.

I don't live here anymore co-produced with Sean Everett and recently we got the chance to chat to their main man all about

the new record and his approach to songwriting. We're very pleased to welcome the terrific Adam

Grandusial to the show. Our guest was born Adam Granovsky in 1979 in Dover, Massachusetts, southwest of Boston.

He first picked up a guitar, his friend's dad's Washburn Electric, to be precise,

around the age of 13, instantly falling in love with the instrument, and his own parents

eventually relented and bought him his own.

Adam was also immersed in photography and painting as a teenager and went on to study both at

university, following which he moved to San Francisco, where he hoped to become an artist himself.

Adam would listen to music as he painted, especially artists like Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Hendricks, Neil Young and Led Zeppelin,

and ultimately became inspired to start making his own.

He bought an 8-track recording machine and would spend hours layering instrumental guitar

tracks in his Oakland department, inspired by Nick Drake's Open Tunings, and Bob Billon's alternate takes for blood on the tracks.

He titled his first demo tape Granducial, after the nickname given to him by his high school French teacher.

He moved to Philadelphia in 2003, where he was to form the War on Drugs with

Kurt Vile. The pair had met at a party, bonded over their shared love of Bob Dylan,

...