Brightest Young Things

One of the newest additions to the already super stellar Secretly Canadian roster The War on Drugs is bringing their sliding guitar americana (which dare we say, is almost Tom Petty-esque?) to the Cat this Sunday (also along for the ride: labelmates Bishop Allen and DC/Brooklyn's finest Deleted Scenes).
In a rarely prolific manouver they have an EP (download for free here-since we and them love you) and an LP simultaneously out and so we sat down, keyboard to mouse with Adam Granduciel who kindly walked us through some of the track.
Sit back.
Enjoy.
Come out Sunday.

'Buenos Aires Beach' - I recorded this version at home in 2005 right after a stray cat I had taken in (Bobby Jean) gave birth to five kittens in my closet. At this point they were about a month old and had begun exploring my room and playing with cables and reels of tape, pooping all over the room and pretty much fuckin up all my shit....but it was still a magical time with all that fresh life everywhere. Then, unfortunately and unexpectedly...one died...BUT THEN a friend in Argentina sent me some nude pics of herself on my birthday so life was back on track! I ended up including it on 'Wagonwheel Blues.'

'Pushing Corn' - this was the first song I used the acetone drum machine on back in '05. I obsessed over this recording for about six months, only to realize 3 years later that it needs to be re-recorded. I remember I had been spending a lot of time in my garden that summer--waking up, calling out of work, making a huge pitcher of iced coffee and workin' in the yard writing songs in my head. I think this one is about watching yourself turn into a monster.

'Arms Like Boulders' - the original 'Barrel' EP had an acoustic version of this song but Secretly Canadian wanted to include this full band version we recorded with the brothers Cobb in early 2007. I wrote this song back in 2002--right before i moved from Oakland to Philly and the lyrics have only gone through a few transformations in that time. We recorded this version on tape and then transferred to the tools and overdubbed the shit out of it and Brian McTear mixed it. About two days before I went to master 'Wagonwheel Blues' I freaked out about the snare sound and called the brothers and said we had to re-mix it right off the tape machine. So the version on the full length is much more sparse than this one and sounds as I always wanted it to...like Highway 61.
'Set Yr Sights' - this is actually just a snippet from a 12 minute instrumental song I recorded one day a few years back. It was a guitar, sampler and percussion all going through a mixer live into one small Fender champ amplifier through a bunch of pedals recorded onto the digital 8 track. It shows up in various forms on Wagonwheel Blues. Since I have a hard time falling asleep I'll often listen to the sampler or old instrumentals like this to get me to dreamland....and then I realize their potential in other songs.

'Taking The Farm' - I wrote this on an old organ that a deadbeat roommate at the time had brought home. I think at the time I was terribly afraid (and still am) of being evicted from my house....lucky for me my landlord has moved to Greece and couldn't care less about the dump. Anyway...just the idea that my house/studio could be taken away was inspiration enough to finish this one. By the end of the song it's kinda the idea that you just gotta keep movin' forward...not lookin back at shit you don't have any control over anyway...and also a bunch of inside jokes between me and KV [The War On Drugs guitarist, Kurt Vile]. His guitar leads are amazing...first takes. He helped me finish writing it.