Runner's Hi-Fi: The War on Drugs, 'Slave Ambient'

With genres splitting into subgenres at the pace of microorganisms, it might be safe to say that The War on Drugs has created the highly marginalized category of alt country shoegazer. Vocally, "Slave Ambient" seems a rather hard-line roots record, with its echoes of everyone from Mick Jagger to Bob Dylan to Tom Petty, vocalists who have all been capable of finding whiskey and tumbleweed in their voices. Instrumentally, though, the album stands out for its ambient layering -- a bizarre crossing of electronics nob-twiddling and jam-band noodling. Sometimes The War on Drugs dispenses with vocals altogether, and you might think you're listening to another band entirely, perhaps an act like American Analog Set. "Original Slave" has the country chug of a freight train and lonely harmonica wails, yet without any lead vocals it seems pretty spacey and out there. But you're brought right back down to Earth just as soon as "Black Water Falls" kicks in, perhaps the most traditional alt country song (if an alt country song can be traditional) on the album. A new genre here? Maybe not. But it certainly is a sound that should long outlast witch house.