When you think of “guitar music,” The War on Drugs probably isn’t what comes to mind. After all, frontman Adam Granduciel doesn’t wail away on his Fenders and Gibsons like master jamsmen John Mayer and Trey Anastasio, much less shred his axe like Metallica’s Kirk Hammett.

What Graduciel does do, though, is captivate audiences with rich, ASMR-inducing tones in between his hapless-but-hopeful lyrics, sung like all the Traveling Wilburys rolled into one.

To that end, the War on Drugs was on top of its game during a recent late-summer night at the Hollywood Bowl. To close out the U.S. leg of its tour in support of the Grammy-winning album A Deeper Understanding, the band busted out a scintillating 16-song set simmering with familiar riffs, strung together as only Granduciel can. Just as his rich soundscapes have helped to turn his band from an obscure Philadelphia-based outfit into a Grammy-winning act, they transformed the unusually thick air at the Hollywood Bowl into his personal palette and canvas.

Following a pitch-perfect (and genre-appropriate) warmup set from Alvvays, the War on Drugs emerged with a pair of songs from 2011’s Slave Ambient (“Brothers” and “Baby Missiles”) before diving into a string of more recent hits, including “Pain,” “An Ocean in Between the Waves” and “Strangest Thing.”

The rest of the set was comprised entirely of new songs and cuts from 2014’s Lost in the Dream, save for “Arms Like Boulders” from 2008’s Wagonwheel Blues and a cover of Warren Zevon’s “Accidentally Like a Martyr” to open the encore. The crowd, while not quite a sellout, nonetheless soaked up Granduciel’s ethereal riffs on “Red Eyes” and “Knocked Down,” “Under the Pressure” and “Thinking of a Place,” and everything in between. The emotional ‘80s inflections of “In Chains,” “Disappearing” and “Burning” managed to move molecules, to the point that at least one observer pondered the possibility of a total chemical transformation just from having been in the building.

To be sure, Granduciel wasn’t short on talented support. David Hartley and Charlie Hall, on bass and drums respectively, built and maintained the rhythmic foundations behind the band’s melodic romps. Robbie Bennett and Anthony LaMarca connected the lead and the beat with a steady blend of guitar and keyboard. Jon Natchez stole the show with his saxophone on multiple occasions.

But rarely, if ever, could the War on Drugs’ other players have won out over Granduciel. That’s no disrespect to them, but rather a reflection of the band leader’s somewhat understated powers of musical persuasion. With his direction, the band created a sound, a vibe, that was more atmospheric than the actual (and unusually heavy) atmosphere hovering over the Hollywood Hills.

The group got a significant boost in that department from a lighting setup that, like the War on Drugs’ music, was far more capable and complex than it may have seemed at first blush. Multiple rows of lights combined to form mirrored parabolas that seemed to at once be doing battle and dancing beautifully above the band. Those theatrics blended perfectly with the venue’s own space-age arrangement beneath the unmistakable rows of the very Hollywood Bowl that encircles the stage.

The War on Drugs’ date at the Bowl was hardly its first in Southern California on its latest sprawling tour. The band began promoting its latest LP with appearances at Apogee Studios in Santa Monica and on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in Hollywood in August 2017, ramped up its efforts at the Greek Theatre in L.A. last October, and kicked it into high gear for back-to-back weekends at Coachella this past April (along with the now-customary regional support dates in between) and the KROQ Weenie Roast in Carson in May. It’s understandable, then, that they may have had difficulty filling the 17,500 seats that make up the Hollywood Bowl.

Those who turned out, though, were treated to transcendent set—enough so to suggest that, while the political “War on Drugs” may be continuing anew, at least one War on Drugs has already been won.

“An Ocean Between Waves”

“In Reverse”

“Eyes to the Wind”

“Burning”

“Disappearing”

[All Videos: Brian James]