I have a bit of a nostalgic spot for La Dispute. While I was working as an underpaid house painter, dangling off of roofs and clinging to outdoor windows in plus 30 temps, I was usually listening to the Michigan post-hardcore outfits’ seminal debut, Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair. There was something about the band’s theatrical mix of hardcore punk, screamo, progressive rock, and emo (we can’t foeget emo) that paired so well with cutting a window. I can still hear the almost junglish drums and reverby chords as lead vocalist, Jordan Dreyer gutturally screams the opening line of “Said the King to the River.”
The band followed their debut with Wildlife, which is still a good album, but for me, it didn’t scratch that itch Somewhere at the Bottom did, not even close. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
Now we are more than 15 years into the future and La Dispute is back with their first album in five years, No One Was Driving The Car, an album that proves La Dispute as still just as theatrical and in as much pain as they were 15 years ago. Dreyer begins the album with a spirited scream verse in “I Shaved My Head,” and I’m back on the window. Some discordant chords and lead bass and guitar? Sign me up. This vibe of progressive emo brings me back to the days when all I had to worry about was a shitty Pontaic Sunfire, but god, I was in so much mental anguish, or at least I thought I was.
It’s as if Dreyer knows this and exposing all of thsoe darkened thoughts you sometimes gets a put them to insane spurts of anxious poetry. Take “Man with Hands and Ankles Bound,” which might be the grooviest I’ve ever heard La Dispute, as Dreyer recites some more tortured artist poetry but this time as a film script. There really aren’t many vocalists like this left. The track morphs into some heavy emo doom with an outro that makes you want to punch through a wall.
We also get some classic Dreyer whispers during the mammoth (8 minutes ish) of a song “Environmental Catastrophe Film,” which injects more of La Disputes experimental nature into the album. “Sibling Fistfight at Mom’s Fiftieth / The Un-sound,” is also a highlight, conveying that while bands like Chat Pile exist as the newer form leading the American cathartic noise rock rebellion, La Dispute really helped start it and now continue to foster it.
