"Baby Missles"

"Come to the City"

Slave Ambient
(Secretly Canadian)
(out of 5)

The War on Drugs' "Baby Missiles," off their 2010 debut, Future Weather, does a hybrid of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen so well it puts both men to shame (if only momentarily). The War on Drugs were the result of a collaboration between Kurt Vile and fellow Philadelphian Adam Granduciel. Although Vile left the band before this year's Slave Ambient, it's yet another study in the things that made Dylan great, while omitting everything that eventually made him into a bore. Everything still feels fresh here. Lush instrumentation and a generous application of reverb and delay makes the medicine go down real smooth, and Ambient further solidifies these songwriters in the pantheon of their forebearers.