Here is a song that will make you long to be back in a concrete arena filled with 20,000 new friends, singing together in a way that makes you think, if only for a moment, that humanity might not be swirling toward total catastrophe. You can feel the stick on the soles of your feet just by listening to this thing. You can smell the frankfurters. It’s the type of anthem that makes one of those $18 Budweisers in a commemorative plastic cup seem like a damn bargain—a small price to pay to briefly heighten some sense of communion after a year and a half of pandemic seclusion.

Everything about the title track to the War on Drugs’ upcoming fifth album is gloriously unsubtle, including its opening lines. “I was lying in my bed/A creature void of form,” sings bandleader Adam Granduciel, nodding to Dylan. “Been so afraid of everything/I need a chance to be reborn.” And honestly, who doesn’t feel like that right now? Cue the synths reminiscent of Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer,” the drums sparkling enough to make ’80s stadium-rock guru Mutt Lange bow down in appreciation, and the gospel-tinged backing vocals that urge you to believe in something beyond yourself. Granduciel has been meticulously mining classic rock sounds for more than a decade, but never quite like this; his Springsteen fandom is well-documented (his young son is named Bruce) but he’s never made a song as welcoming as “Hungry Heart” until now. 

“I Don’t Live Here Anymore” celebrates getting to the point in life when you’re no longer drowning in waves of old memories but surfing atop them. The title is not a lament but a point of pride. Amid a daydreaming verse, Granduciel wonders, “Is life just dying in slow motion/Or getting stronger everyday?” Then a cascade of toms and guitars give way to the majestic hook, and the answer could not be clearer.