A rock band from Philadelphia with the songwriting brio of Tom Petty and the musical sensibilities of Sonic Youth, a love of vintage recording equipment and a passion for synth s, loops and samplers, The War on Drugs are a three-piece of contradictions, writes Kevin Courtney

SOME of us are old enough to remember the War on Drugs. Not the band - they've only been together a couple of years, and our short-term memory hasn't completely gone yet. No, we're talking about the so-called War on Drugs instigated by the US government to, er, crack down on pot-smoking, coke-snorting, glue-sniffing, commie, pinko hippies.

Adam Granduciel was only a whippersnapper in his native Philadelphia when the War on Drugs was in full swing during the 1980s, so he probably wasn't too concerned about any threat to his civil liberties. These days, the War on Drugs has morphed into the War on Terror, but Granduciel has resurrected the name for his band, a psychedelic, rootsy combo that conjures up the spirit of such 1980s acts as Sonic Youth, The Replacements and Tom Petty.

"With the name The War on Drugs, I always thought I could record different kinds of music under that name," explains Granduciel. "I didn't feel it could be pigeonholed. Whether we recorded a stripped-down album, or an instrumental album, the name could always work. Ever since I first heard it, there was something about it that appealed to me."

Ironically, the music on The War On Drugs' debut album, Wagonwheel Blues, is the perfect soundtrack for rolling up. Granduciel's songwriting evokes the wide expanses of the American frontier, but also the tripped-out sound of the West Coast coupled with the kind of loose attitude that can only come from living in the city of funk and soul.

In true Philly style, the band evolved naturally, says Granduciel, moving smoothly through a number of line-up changes before settling into its guitar groove. "We were just shaking things up, playing around in clubs," he recalls. "But the whole time, regardless of the live line-up, I was working on a lot of songs and doing recordings, and by early last year I had a good, solid band together."

Wagonwheel Bluessounds like a quintessentially southern album, but it's informed by a deeply experimental approach to classic American rock and country, and an old-fashioned jamming mentality that sees many of the songs break out into long, psychedelic guitar wig-outs.

Such tunes as Arms Like Boulders, Taking the Farmand Reverse the Chargesdidn't simply emerge fully formed from the rehearsal room, says Granduciel; they're the result of many recording sessions and live shows where ideas and riffs would get tossed around until they began to take song shape.

"Yeah, I think it definitely evolved, like the songwriting has evolved too - maybe I'd write it at home on an acoustic, and then I'd bring it in and we'd get a different feel to it live. And when we went to friends' studios to record - they were still home studios, but you could turn the amps up real loud and experiment a lot more - a lot of that stuff kind of started to happen."

One element there from the beginning, however, was Granduciel's ringing voice, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the sharp, saw-blade tones of Tom Petty. For Granduciel, there's no dichotomy between his passion for Sonic Youth and the hardcore bands of Washington DC and his admiration for an all-American rock hero such as Petty.

"I feel an affinity with both. Growing up, I listened to Sonic Youth all the time, and Petty. Probably in the last two or three years I've become a lot more into Tom Petty. I knew all the hits, and I always loved to hear him on the radio, but in the last couple of years I've really gotten into all his albums.

"Because he was from the South, he was probably grouped in with a lot of those jam bands, like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers, but he wasn't like them at all - he was taking his cue from a lot of different stuff."

When Granduciel's band arrives in Dublin to play Crawdaddy this weekend, they'll discover a city in total thrall to another of his heroes - Bruce Springsteen. In fact, all a band has to do is namecheck the Boss in their press release, and they're almost guaranteed to draw a crowd in Dublin. But Granduciel's not tempted to play up any association (he lives in the state next door to Bruce), and he won't be overstating the political overtones of the band's name and music.

"I don't think any of the songs are really like protest songs - I don't think I would write a song about George Bush or the political system," he asserts. "It would be more reacting to living in the 21st century in America and growing up and all that.

"You don't want to finger-point - it's not the point of writing a song. Some people think the first song on the album, Arms Like Boulders, is like a protest song, and I know it has that vibe, but that was written in 2002 and I know Bush was president then, but it wasn't really about that. But there is a point I'm trying to make in the songs - it's just not overt."

Get Granduciel on the subject of studios and recording, though, and you can't get him off the podium. In the great digital-analogue debate, he's firmly on the analogue side, proselytising about the joys of old tape loop machines and vintage mixing desks.

"I work really well with the board, and hooking something up to it and re-routing it. It's more hands-on for me rather than just sitting at a screen. At two in the morning, when you've got your headphones on and you're working on a track, you can move your hands around more and just groove to it, y'know? Like feeling it rather than just automating stuff.

"I also like the idea of doing something in my house and then bringing it somewhere else and working on it - I think it gives it some nice character in the end."

While the songs on Wagonwheel Bluesmay start off like straightforward indie-rock songs, it's not long before they're bouncing all over the sonic landscape like escaped spacehoppers.

"I really like ambient stuff and stuff with synthesisers, loops and samplers, so any chance I get to do that, I will," he says unapologetically. "I don't throw things on just for the hell of it, though - it's not like we have a rootsy song, and then we just toss on a bunch of stuff. But it always just feels natural to space the guitars out a little bit or soften the drums out or put a synth on instead of a piano.

"And also, obviously, when you get a ripping guitar part and you blow out the tape machine, that's a nice way to blow something out. You can't do that with Pro Tools." Another plus about doing it the old-fashioned way is that, once the mixing's done, it's not so easy to go back and fiddle with it, and for studio rat Granduciel, the urge to go back and change a vocal part or replace a guitar lick is always there. "Once I get started, once I get the machine turned on and ready to record, it's hard to stop."

He'll have to put the whole recording thing on pause for a few weeks, though, while the band embark on their first European tour. For Granduciel, it'll be a welcome change from doing his "5,000th trip to New York, then down to DC.

"Hopefully we can go there and our excitement at being there will be reflected in the performances. The only drag is that we can't bring all of our gear."

The War on Drugs play Dublin's Crawdaddy on Sunday. Wagonwheel Blues is out now on Secretly Canadian