The War On Drugs played a set right after Tame Impala, and since the two bands construct the same sort of freewheeling, psychedelic guitar rock, there is clearly some overlap between their fanbases. This overlap includes me, and as the crowd surged toward Weird Al’s parody-pop and Adam Granduciel’s blue-black psych-rock, I ended up getting to their performance in time to catch 2008’s “Arms Like Boulders.” It’s funny, that song is off the one album that Kurt Vile was still in the band for, and leans far more alt-rock than the lusher psychedelic textures Granduciel has pursued since. I’d never heard that older track live, and the rest of the setlist was mostly tracks off Lost In The Dream, which came out last year and was unequivocally one of the best records of 2014. One of the only other song he played that wasn’t on Lost In The Dream was a song off 2011’s Slave Ambient, the album that made me start listening to this band at all. While setlist.fm is almost always reliable, and reports it was “Come To The City,” fellow Stereogum writer Ryan Leas and I are 90% sure it was actually “Baby Missiles.” Either way, like many of his songs, both of those tracks build up and up and up until finally careening off into chaos as the lyrics drop out and guitar takes over. During this live performance though, he stretched out that final number with effortless, ferocious exuberance. As I listened to one of the first guitar licks that made me a fan of this band, I tilted my head back and looked up at the open sky. Above the cigarette smoke, above the quivering crowd, and above Granduciel’s shuddering psych-rock, the New York sky was bright, sharp blue, no end in sight. Paired with Granduciel’s endless guitar patterns, drifting like a knitter’s needle left to itself, this felt like a perfect, peaceful moment in a jam-packed, hectic day. His band is important sure, but this man occupies the stage like the stars he emulates — Dylan, Springsteen — wheeling out his eternal-fuzz guitar solos with the aplomb of a butler. War On Drugs may well be the most precise psych-rock in the land; classic, contemporary, and unapologetic. –Caitlin