The title of The War on Drugs’ latest album, released this past March, is "Lost in the Dream," fitting for a record – and a moment in time – that utterly enveloped the band’s front man Adam Granduciel.

The album’s creation was an entirely exhausting experience for Granduciel. Emotionally, he was coping with the end of a long-term relationship, along with the loneliness and difficult probing introspection that followed. Professionally, he was facing just as many pressures from others and, perhaps most of all, from himself to deliver an album just as critically and socially beloved, as well as musically satisfying, as his previous effort, "Slave Ambient."

It was an anxious, rigorous and wearying process on almost every possible level for Granduciel, filled with tinkering, demoing, recording, going back to demos, tinkering again, reflection and recording some more. The long, intense emotional experience and Granduciel’s borderline perfectionist tendencies, however, have resulted in a pretty terrific record, an album of breathtaking and heartbreaking beauty that’s earned Granduciel and company some of their finest write-ups.

Now that "Lost in the Dream" is out there, the band is now taking it on the road, including a stop in Milwaukee at The Pabst Theater on Sunday, Sept. 21. Before then, OnMilwaukee.com got a chance to chat with Granduciel about becoming a real band on the road, the process behind the album and the inner battles that went into it. 

OnMilwaukee.com: What was it like going into this album, especially with the massive success of your previous record? Did you feel any extra pressure on this one?

Adam Granduciel: Yeah, I felt like there was a lot of pressure, mostly to expand my own abilities as a writer or whatever, my own mind. I think that pressure was so I’d make something that I was really proud of and that I felt was really a step up and that I felt was a good representation of the kind of music I wanted to make and the kind of music that I loved. There was a lot of pressure involved in going for that and striving for that.

OMC: How did you originally want to go about doing that, making that voice, and how did that evolve over the course of the album creation?

AG: I didn’t think about it too much; I just kind of started small and started working on writing music, like I love to do. I started working on demos, and then with those demos, I eventually booked studio time and started fleshing them out as a band. And then we went back to the demos and kind of kept searching for the moments in each song that triggered that feeling, which is something only I know. You just gotta trust your gut and go for it, trust that you know when it’s right or when it needs to be tweaked or whatever.

OMC: What song was the most difficult on the new album to find that feeling?

AG: Probably "An Ocean In Between the Waves" or "Disappearing." Yeah, those were the ones where I was definitely … I mean, they were all hard, but those two were the ones where I was really searching for that sound or that feeling. Everyone was like, "Hey, that’s cool," and I was like that’s not cool, dude; only I know when it sounds cool. You kind of have to just go into this moment, like you know when it’s not.

But yeah, "Disappearing" and "Ocean" were two. They were also really close, like I held them really close. I knew they could be great and that I could be really proud of them. That’s a part of the fun, that journey through recording is something I love so much. I miss it when we’re not. When we’re playing live, then we’re doing that thing, and that’s awesome in its own way. But I love that journey of making a record and getting inside the songs and having the songs really just encompass your life. That’s something I’m really happy that I can contribute to, something so important to me.

OMC: You said in a previous interview with Grantland that you guys became a real band while on the road promoting your last album. How did that process happen? 

AG: I think just in people developing certain personalities on their instruments. I think it’s because all of a sudden, we had Robbie who’s a dedicated keyboard player. And then I was kind of developing a little bit more of a sound as a guitarist and a little bit more confidence in my role as guitar player and singer. Those things started to take shape, and at the same time, I think that the public’s awareness of the band started to grow as well.

We started to step into these roles, and then it just kind of progressed from there. You make the tweaks you want to make in the band, fix things that aren’t working and add things to the group that you want to hear. For this record, I added live saxophone because that was a big part of the record. You have to let it evolve, and you have to trust the people you’re playing with, that everyone’s on the same page. I’m blessed and fortunate that everybody is.

OMC: The creation of this latest album sounds like it was a very emotionally exhausting process for you. How did all of that coalesce into this album?

AG: Definitely. Like I said, starting with the demos and moving into full band stuff and really getting into songs and figuring out what’s working and what’s not, it’s all encompassing. The creation of the music in the context of my life is all the same thing. I’m not able to separate one or the other, so anything that was going on in my personal life that was less than ideal, I was putting it on the record.

I wasn’t putting it aside or being like, "Well, I’m in the middle of making a psychedelic rock record, so I can’t think about it." This is my life, and these are my songs, and this is what’s going to inform the material. That’s why I’ve always wanted to make music, and that’s why I love music; it’s a reflection of people’s lives at the time.

Like "Darkness on the Edge of Town," it was a hard time for (Bruce Springsteen). Sure, he’d had a lot of success with "Born to Run," but he was past that. He was in a different frame of mind than you’d expect, so that’s always what I’ve been attracted to in rock music, that singular kind of vision or voice. And I want to attempt to add to that a little bit.

OMC: In Grantland's piece, a quote says that "it's not accurate to classify 'Dream' as 'depressing' ... It's more that it evokes the sensation of feeling depressed." Were you depressed at the time making that album?

AG: Probably yeah. Probably before and after it, too.

OMC: After, as well?

AG: Well yeah, it’s not something that just goes away or just contracts, either. Yeah, I think it’s a record not about being depressed; it’s about the realization and coming of age into your life. It was at a time in my life where I was very unsure of about a million different things, and that’s what happens when you start asking yourself questions that you’ve avoided for a long time.

Maybe not for everybody, but for me, I started having a very difficult time knowing what everything was all about and what’s the point of life, again, you know? Can someone please tell me? That kind of thing, like, why am I having such a hard time existing? So yeah, I was dealing with things that everyone I think in some capacity deals with.

I guess that’s why I wanted to make music in the first place, just to add to that discourse a little bit. I was definitely going through a hard time. It’s always there; anyone who suffers from anything can tell you it’s always there. It’s just a matter of going out and playing and staying busy and working and staying focused.

OMC: Those questions about life, do you think we ever get those answers?

AG: I think that, for me personally, I’m still finding them through work. I wanted to make a record or contribute to music in a way that made me proud, that was in the canon of things that I loved as a musician and really stretch myself and make something that I was really proud of. Even though the record before had some legs and "did well," it still wasn’t something that I necessarily felt was a true representation of the kind of music that I loved. So I was like, even though people are liking this, I still don’t feel satisfied in this being where we’re at musically. I can do better; I can make something that touches people a little bit more.

That’s what I was hoping to find: something bigger than what I kind of expected to find.