The War on Drugs: Wagonwheel Blues (Longtime Listener)

Some music is purely functional: music in airports; massage music, Kiwi backyard-bbq reggae etc.

This one by a US band I know nothing about is driving music -- annoying inner city stop-start or highway freedom -- and comes off in places like amphetamine-fuelled and wordy Dylan '65 (or more correctly, Butch Hancock when he was doing that style, if you get the reference).

The singer has a whiny, nasal and wind-blown folk-rock speak-sing voice, the band crank along like Explosions in the Sky creating ragged r'n'b backdrops or sonic landscapes, and although I can't recall a single chorus or song title I have been playing this for weeks in the car and have returned to it frequently between other albums.

They even shave off a little early Springsteen and early Tom Petty, but mostly they sound like a bunch of people who have listened to Highway 61 Revisited quite a lot -- but like noisy guitars and freewheelin' organ. I even like the track Show Me The Coast which is just a 10 minute Velvet Underground chord'n'jangle with the barely audible singer somewhere at the far end of the room. Great played loud when you are stuck at the lights.

I may never hear any more from these people, but I am liking this very much in the present tense.