If the eleven-minute “Thinking of a Place” wasn’t enough of a hint that the War on Drugs might be swinging for the fences on their imminent fourth album, A Deeper Understanding, the stormy “Strangest Thing” confirms it with grandeur. Whereas most of the War on Drugs’ best songs are slivers of road trip-ready Americana that negotiate a zen state between galloping rhythms and lightness, “Strangest Thing” is cut from a different cloth. A slow-burner, it lumbers out the gate full of portent and, over the course of its runtime expertly dials up the drama, with Wurlitzer organs and a wall of synths that lead to a booming finale.
Singer Adam Granduciel has never sounded more like Dylan than he does here, and while his lyrics express the ambivalence of a man stuck in an in-between state (“I ain’t got everything I need/If I’m just living in the space between the beauty and the pain”), the mammoth riff and wandering guitar solos that punctuate the song’s climax undercut his ambiguity with a bigness that sounds absolute and definitive. This is the kind of song that you can only imagine being performed outdoors under an enormous sky; it’s a testament to Granduciel’s growing powers that suddenly no space seems too big for him to fill.
