La Dispute - No One Was Driving the Car Review
A raw and unflinching return, La Dispute channel personal grief into a wider reckoning with collapse, creating an album that balances fury, fragility, and desolate beauty.
No One Was Driving The Car acts as the first album in six years for the Michigan rockers who formed at high school back in 2004. A departure from the previously personal, predecessor Panorama that examined mental health, the passage of time and declining relationships, what was once personal grief has been exacerbated to the outer world, reflective of the environmental themes and systems of control to culminate in an album bursting with enticing anguish.
The post-hardcore outfit open strong with the first track ‘I Shaved My Head,’ full of subdued intent that builds alongside the instrumentation, suggesting at an anger that rises as the song persists. The narrator’s disassociation paired with the increasing composition sets a precedent for the rest of the album, a narrative unfolding through consciously composed tracks that paint out this desolate truth of humanity as it stands. The delivery of the lyrics is sharp and desperate, a monotonous scream that intends to plainly state the beginning of the end of the narrator’s turmoil. ‘Shaved my head to force a change/To be un-recognized,’ lead vocalist Jordan Drayer merely puts it as.
‘Autofiction Detail’ is distinctive in crunchy bass tone established that further immerses this project in a greyness. This desperateness is a reoccurring theme within this album, floating through tracks as a signifier for wanting better for this disparate world the album sets itself in. It returns in this track within the increasing intensity of voice before finding tranquil and acceptance, with the spoken delivery a final sign of resignation at the end. Expression and storytelling are expanded upon in two behemoth tracks that allow the space for travel and narrative to unfold in a way that the instrumentation can supplement the narrative dispelled within the lyrics. On the track ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film,’ a switch from the fast and driven guitar to a more sombre, slowed passing moment in the track, allows the narrative to take a reflective step before the drums are pelting and the screams make their way into the narrator’s recollection.
‘Top Sellers Banquet’ has the narrator guiding us through this scene of rapture, the lyrics grow more drastic and frantic as the instrumentation remains steady and unchanged, creating a drawn out tension that facilitates the notion of a widely accepted, disastrous future. ‘Self-Portrait Backwards’ is a showcase for the acoustic guitar, a creeping horn instrument enters as the reflections in the lyricism go back further to different points in the narrator’s life. It’s Slint-esque in its manner and desolation, the track proves that sometimes the quiet moments are the loudest, the chiming bells punctuating the chorus. ‘The Field’ is another articulation of sombreness versus aggression with its ending unwieldy and unleashed in the percussive drums and a strained guitar coming through like a poor radio signal.
The title track is a summation of the album’s mood, of a measured calamity against a sad instrumentation, ushered in by the guitar performances, mirroring an equal melancholy. By the time we reach the final track ‘End Times Sermon’, the urgent energy has seemed to peter out, with intent, the climax of this narrative hence becoming subdued and quiet.
There is a message in the refined screams, the cataclysmic drumming sections that sprawl out and fade in attempt to find calm, the melancholy that comes with the electric guitar becoming less of a character as the album goes on, replaced by strums and intricate picking of the acoustic. What La Dispute have done here is managed to articulate a full scale environmental catastrophe, every choice sonically intent with a hand on a clear message of disaster and despair, culminating in beautiful devastation.