Conceptual band La Dispute have released five new songs as Act 3 of their forthcoming album No One Was Driving the Car—their first full-length since 2019’s Panorama. Spanning years of the narrator’s life, these songs rewind to the beginning of the journey, as the baroque narrative continues to twist through a sonic landscape that touches every corner of the La Dispute universe: soft and delicate one moment, abrupt and crushing the next. Vocalist Jordan Dreyer explains:
the next act encompasses in more focused detail the narrator’s look backwards down the path, beginning at their shared home in the present day, where the dissociation introduced in act one as almost entirely a self-inclosed thing trickles outward and troubles the comfort outlined in the last section of the song preceding it. he examines his own life through imagined self-portraits, in various sequences of time (fractions of days first, then weeks, months, years), and through multiple specific events. from there, four critically influential events from his earlier life are detailed in four songs:
first, a story from his early teenage years, where he and his brother—up north hunting with their father in the area where he and his own brother (the boys’ uncle, who has long lived far away elsewhere), and their father (who died when they were young)—stumble upon what they believe to be an abandoned paramilitary compound. in the middle of the field beside it they come to a hole dug in the ground full of deer carcasses. the narrator becomes fixated on the bodies below, unable to break his gaze from them, while the brother continues on toward the compound, a metaphor both for their diverging paths and for the obsessions/explanations that motivated them to take which ones they did.
the second song happens a few years later, at their mother’s fiftieth birthday party, where several siblings—drunk and airing internal grievances—fight on the basement staircase while their mother contemplates what role her own actions as a parent played in their arrival at that moment and in the conflicted history that led up to it. in the second half of the song, the siblings are gathered at the parents’ house again, years after the fight, for a quarterly group birthday celebration for several of their own children.
the third song occurs years on from there, with a pitch made to the partner of the narrator—working through undergrad at the time—from purveyors of a multi-level marketing company central to the history of grand rapids, and in some ways inextricably entwined with the christian reformed church mentioned earlier on the record (somewhat importantly, the rapture is invoked at the very end of the song, in a section discussing extraordinary wealth).
the final song centers around the friend whose funeral appeared earlier in act two, and is presented as reflections of their shared experiences together in youth, chiefly a snowy night drifting in a car together across an empty church parking lot, and the crash that occurred when the car spun on ice to slide sidelong into a curb and embankment. the end of the song harkens back heavily to the second section of act two (the song “Environmental Catastrophe Film”) and represents a full-circle consideration of the control dictated to him via exposure to calvinist teachings in childhood.
Act 3 drops alongside a new video for ‘Sibling Fistfight at Mom’s Fiftieth / The Unsound.’ Directed, shot, edited, and starring Dreyer himself, the video stays true to the DIY spirit of the project. Each act has been arriving with a companion documentary directed by Martin. The release of third doc is forthcoming but check out the first two in the meantime: Chapter I / Chapter II
Listen to Act 3 HERE
Watch the video for ‘Sibling Fistfight at Mom’s Fiftieth / The Unsound’
Listen to Act 2 HERE
Watch the video for ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’
Listen to Act 1 HERE
Watch The video for ‘I Shaved My Head’
The band has collaborated with ten visual artists to craft actualized pieces from the faux painting titles listed in the lyrics of “Self-Portrait Backwards.” Alongside an assortment of traditional media pieces created for the album art by bassist Adam Vass, the collection entitled Exhibition: Work In Progress opens Wednesday, Sept 3rd at Morning Ritual in Grand Rapids, Michigan (150 Ottawa Ave NW). The art will remain on display through Grand Rapids’ annual Artprize event, ending October 4th. Prints and original work will be available for purchase at the exhibition as well as a limited supply online after close.
Artists involved:
- Son Visual https://www.sonvisualco.com/
- Mitchell Van Dyke mitchellvandyke.com
- Genna Howard https://www.genna-howard.com/
- Zayna Youssef instagram.com/zaynayoussef
- Yewon Kwon https://yewonkwon.com/
- Dave Watt instagram.com/davewattrules
- Steph Ellis https://fieldsparrowstudio.com/
- Kyler Martz https://www.kylermartz.com/
- Brittany Gabey https://gabeaux.net/
- Caralyn Jellison https://www.caralynjellison.com/
Out September 5th via Epitaph No One Was Driving the Car was self produced and heavily inspired by the 2017 psychological thriller First Reformed and grapples with malaise in the shadow of the looming apocalypse, which has noticeably been worsened by the advancement of tech. The title comes from a quote from a police officer vocalist Jordan Dreyer read in a news article about a lethal self-driving Tesla crash, an absurd event which raises questions about the amount of control we have in our own lives. Throughout the album, screens and cameras disrupt moments of transcendence. It happens alongside flashes of mundane suffering—frequent daydreams of drowning, flashbacks to eye-contact with dead animals, experiences of decaying relationships and secondhand suicides—while Dreyer yells with a more primal sense and sings in a more refined way, and the guitars have a sharper edge than ever before.
The rest of the album will continue to follow within acts until its conclusion in September.
La Dispute
No One Was Driving the Car
Tracklist…
I Shaved My Head
Man with Hands and Ankles Bound
Autofiction Detail
Environmental Catastrophe Film
Self-Portrait Backwards
The Field
Sibling Fistfight at Mom’s Fiftieth / The Un-Sound
Landlord Calls the Sheriff In
Steve
Top-Sellers Banquet
Saturation Diver
I Dreamt of a Room with All My Friends
No One Was Driving the Car
End Times Sermon
