| I Don't Live Here Anymore | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | The War on Drugs |
| Cover: | I Don't Live Here Anymore (The War on Drugs).png |
| Recorded: | 2018–2021 |
| Length: | 52:16 |
| Label: | Atlantic |
| Prev Title: | A Deeper Understanding |
| Prev Year: | 2017 |
I Don't Live Here Anymore is the fifth studio album by American indie rock band The War on Drugs. It was released on October 29, 2021, through Atlantic Records.[1] The album received widespread acclaim, with one of its singles, "Harmonia's Dream," receiving a nomination for Best Rock Song at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards.[2]
I Don't Live Here Anymore was recorded at seven different studios over the course of three years. The album was co-produced by frontman Adam Granduciel and engineer Shawn Everett.[3] Granduciel moved to Los Angeles at the end of 2014, but spent most of 2018 living in New York City.[4] In March 2018, while still on tour in support of the band's fourth album A Deeper Understanding, Granduciel began work on the album at Outlier Inn studio in Upstate New York. He spent a week there demoing songs with bassist Dave Hartley and multi-instrumentalist Anthony LaMarca.[5] In between touring, Granduciel also spent time writing and recording at Studio G in Brooklyn. At the end of 2018, the band spent a week recording at Electric Lady Studios in downtown Manhattan. Granduciel spent 2019 in Los Angeles, and recorded with band at Electro-Vox Recording Studios in May 2019. Granduciel and Everett separated in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. They reunited in October 2020 at Sound City Studios, where they recorded for three weeks. Recording also took place at Sunset Sound Recorders and EastWest Studios.[6]
The songs on I Don't Live Here Anymore were all reimagined, rewritten and/or remixed multiple times over the course of the album's three-year recording process. Once the album was given a "final" mixing and was mastered by Greg Calbi, Granduciel decided to change the mixes of several songs. After a month of revision, Atlantic Records pushed back its release date. One day, Granduciel arranged a final session with Everett to complete the album. They spent twelve hours in Everett's studio remixing several tracks, and then remastered those songs themselves.
The band announced the album on July 19, 2021, simultaneously releasing the single "Living Proof".[7] The album's title track, which features Lucius, was released on September 15, 2021.[8] "Change" was released on October 26, 2021.[9] I Don't Live Here Anymore was released on October 29, 2021, through Atlantic Records. It follows their Grammy Award-winning album A Deeper Understanding (2017) and is the second record of a two-album deal with Atlantic.[10]
I Don't Live Here Anymore received acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 85, based on 25 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 8.0 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus. Rhys Buchanan of NME gave the album 5 out of 5 stars, writing, "There's magic everywhere you look on this triumph of an album." Mark Beaumont of Classic Rock wrote that the album is "at its most immersive when they strip the moodscapes back to piano, glacial atmospherics and cracked emotion on "Living Proof", "Rings Around My Father's Eyes" and the rousing "Old Skin", allowing a little fragility to tint their mist blue." Writing for Beats Per Minute, John Amen concluded, "There’s something ungraspable about their music: referential yet original, derivative yet prototypical, memorable yet oddly irretrievable. Ponderous yet transcendent. A listener is invited to encounter the assorted boundaries of their own preferences, biases, identity – to let those hard lines dissolve."[11] Sharon O'Connell of Uncut wrote, "The War On Drugs have fine-tuned their hybrid of American drivetime classicism and kosmische on "I Don't Live Here Anymore" and buffed it to a warm sheen."
| List | Rank | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Billboard | The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | |||
| Entertainment Weekly | The 10 best albums of 2021 | |||
| The Guardian | The 50 best albums of 2021 | |||
| Mojo | The 75 Best Albums of 2021 | |||
| NME | The 50 best albums of 2021 | |||
| Paste | The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | |||
| Pitchfork | The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | |||
| Spin | The 30 Best Albums of 2021 | |||
| Stereogum | The 50 Best Albums of 2021 | |||
| Uncut | The Top 75 Albums of the Year |
The War on Drugs
Additional musicians
Technical
Artwork and design
| Position | ||
| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[12] | 44 | |
|---|---|---|
| Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[13] | 99 |
| Position | ||
| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[14] | 67 |
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