Rocker (feedbot)
Gold Member
Post-hardcore legends La Dispute have released their first album in six years – or rather, they have just finished releasing it. ‘No One Was Driving the Car’, an exploration of social and psychological decay, has been steadily releasing over the past three months. The album is split into five ‘acts’, each of which is about the length of an EP, with the final album release including the previously unheard fifth act.
That five act structure – itself an interesting way of conceiving an album in the age of streaming – creates distinct thematic chunks, not only in Jordan Dreyer’s poetic lyricism, but in the music itself. The first act is primarily about dissociation and alienation, and the instrumentals mirror this sense of fragmentation and desperation.
Opening track ‘I Shaved My Head’ begins with stark drums and Dreyer’s vocals, fraught and emotional. It lingers like this until the track is given more shape by an overdriven bass, pushing into harsher frequencies that allow no space for comfort. By the time guitars begin floating over the top, the sound has already been clearly and forcefully defined by the bass and the vocals. La Dispute push this even further in the follow-up ‘Man with Hands and Ankles Bound’, which is frantic and urgent. By the time the first act starts to wrap up, the urgency is leaving but the harsh, angular music remains, playing under vocals that in their quieter moments are reminiscent of The Dismemberment Plan.
The second act is only one song long – although that song is almost nine minutes long and really comprises of three distinct sections. ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’ is described by Dreyer as being the “thematic centre” of the album. It’s filled with childhood memories, though the mood is anti-nostalgic. The song starts quietly, melodic, building gradually over the first three minutes until it erupts and some of the urgency of the first act returns. It comes in waves. The anger washes over, and the final part of the song begins, quieter again, melancholic. And then a final wave crashes over the song’s final climax.
Act three is the longest, and perhaps the most conventional here. Five songs, opening with ‘Self-Portrait Backwards’, which outlines the theme of the album’s middle section. An exploration of key events in the unnamed protagonist’s past which he uses to attempt a form of self-recognition to break his own dissociation. Though, as with ‘The Field’, in which the narrator recalls staring fixedly into a pile of deer carcasses, this attempt to peer through his own mind still leaves the music troubled and troubling, alternating between soft melodies and guttural, driving moments of pure despair.
If the second act is the album’s thematic core, the fourth is the location of its “spiritual/metaphysical event”, in Dreyer’s words. Throughout the album, a motif of evangelical Christianity and the rapture has developed. In ‘Top – Sellers Banquet’, the rapture takes place. Another song that is over eight minutes long, it’s a mirror to ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’. The rest of act four deals with a compounding sense of alienation and disintegration, the narrator left behind after the rapture.
The final act, which debuts with the album itself, opens on a softer note. Acoustic guitar and feedback evoking the sound of rain. ‘No One Was Driving the Car’ is the album’s titular song, inspired by a fatal self-driving car crash. The vocals are desperate, even as beautiful layers of guitars bathe them. Along with ‘End Times Sermon’, this is the album at its softest. A coda that leaves us to breathe and process the story that has unfolded in jagged pieces over the past hour.
‘No One Was Driving the Car’ is a monumental piece of musical storytelling that is absolutely rooted in the present day. It is more a series of vignettes than a collection of songs, with every track both distinct in its own structure and also completely in line with the album as a whole. The five act structure helps with this, allowing each part of the album to find its own voice and each subsequent part to be informed by what has come before.
WILL BRIGHT
That five act structure – itself an interesting way of conceiving an album in the age of streaming – creates distinct thematic chunks, not only in Jordan Dreyer’s poetic lyricism, but in the music itself. The first act is primarily about dissociation and alienation, and the instrumentals mirror this sense of fragmentation and desperation.
Opening track ‘I Shaved My Head’ begins with stark drums and Dreyer’s vocals, fraught and emotional. It lingers like this until the track is given more shape by an overdriven bass, pushing into harsher frequencies that allow no space for comfort. By the time guitars begin floating over the top, the sound has already been clearly and forcefully defined by the bass and the vocals. La Dispute push this even further in the follow-up ‘Man with Hands and Ankles Bound’, which is frantic and urgent. By the time the first act starts to wrap up, the urgency is leaving but the harsh, angular music remains, playing under vocals that in their quieter moments are reminiscent of The Dismemberment Plan.
The second act is only one song long – although that song is almost nine minutes long and really comprises of three distinct sections. ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’ is described by Dreyer as being the “thematic centre” of the album. It’s filled with childhood memories, though the mood is anti-nostalgic. The song starts quietly, melodic, building gradually over the first three minutes until it erupts and some of the urgency of the first act returns. It comes in waves. The anger washes over, and the final part of the song begins, quieter again, melancholic. And then a final wave crashes over the song’s final climax.
Act three is the longest, and perhaps the most conventional here. Five songs, opening with ‘Self-Portrait Backwards’, which outlines the theme of the album’s middle section. An exploration of key events in the unnamed protagonist’s past which he uses to attempt a form of self-recognition to break his own dissociation. Though, as with ‘The Field’, in which the narrator recalls staring fixedly into a pile of deer carcasses, this attempt to peer through his own mind still leaves the music troubled and troubling, alternating between soft melodies and guttural, driving moments of pure despair.
If the second act is the album’s thematic core, the fourth is the location of its “spiritual/metaphysical event”, in Dreyer’s words. Throughout the album, a motif of evangelical Christianity and the rapture has developed. In ‘Top – Sellers Banquet’, the rapture takes place. Another song that is over eight minutes long, it’s a mirror to ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’. The rest of act four deals with a compounding sense of alienation and disintegration, the narrator left behind after the rapture.
The final act, which debuts with the album itself, opens on a softer note. Acoustic guitar and feedback evoking the sound of rain. ‘No One Was Driving the Car’ is the album’s titular song, inspired by a fatal self-driving car crash. The vocals are desperate, even as beautiful layers of guitars bathe them. Along with ‘End Times Sermon’, this is the album at its softest. A coda that leaves us to breathe and process the story that has unfolded in jagged pieces over the past hour.
‘No One Was Driving the Car’ is a monumental piece of musical storytelling that is absolutely rooted in the present day. It is more a series of vignettes than a collection of songs, with every track both distinct in its own structure and also completely in line with the album as a whole. The five act structure helps with this, allowing each part of the album to find its own voice and each subsequent part to be informed by what has come before.
WILL BRIGHT