The drugs won

At face value, the shimmering electric guitars of shoegazers such as My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive couldn’t seem further from the wounded lyricism of Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska”and the early recordings of Bob Dylan, but The War on Drugs has successfully combined these disparate sounds within a fairly traditional rock ‘n’ roll framework to create one of the best albums of 2011.

Across 47 minutes of era-mashing rock, the Philadelphia act tackles love and loss, life and death and acoustics and electronics with equal fervor. In a way that few records in this retro-obsessed indie climate do, “Slave Ambient” is heart-wrenchingly genuine. It turns to the past for musical reference points, but everything on the album comes from frontman Adam Granduciel’s soul — not the soul of a past life or some abstract, ancient rock ‘n’ roll soul that he uses The War on Drugs to channel.

By transcending his influences without ever disrespecting them, Granduciel has crafted an indie rock masterpiece with “Slave Ambient.”