La Dispute have announced details of their first album in six years. The conceptual post-hardcore outfit will release ‘No One Was Driving The Car’ through Epitaph Records on September 5th. The self-produced record is inspired by the 2017 psychological thriller ‘First Reformed,’ and will consist of five acts.
The first act, which consists of three tracks, has been released today; ‘I Shaved My Head’, ‘Man with Hands and Ankles Bound’ and ‘Autofiction Detail’. The trio of tracks detail a single night in crisis inspired by film director Paul Schrader’s “man in the room” trope.
“It begins with a man examining his own slow dissociation from himself while shaving his head alone in a bathroom at night, then shifts through a neighbour’s open window to a conversation about control and desire, framed via the image of a man seen through it: bound on the floor with a woman standing before him, presumably a sex worker,” explains La Dispute vocalist Jordan Dreyer. “When the woman exits the building (her companion still tied up), the narrator leaves his own, following less her than the idea represented by her inside his own struggle to reconnect to desires for life severed by time, self, and circumstance, or perhaps fleeing the implication he draws from the man left behind (his helplessness, maybe, or else his confidence to pursue something complicated where the narrator has so consistently failed). The third song follows him on that destination-less late night walk, among the street people and their disasters, ending where he had the whole night subconsciously always headed: the hospital where\ his partner works, at which point an internal reckoning occurs.
Despite their absence, La Dispute sounds as sharp as ever. ‘I Shaved My Head’ opens with Dreyer’s familiar spoken-singing style as bleak intensity builds. As it segues into ‘Man with Hands and Ankles Bound,’ La Dispute‘s rigid ferocity grows through wiry guitars. Finally, ‘Autofiction Detail’ struts with hazy vocals, demonstrating the frequent daydreaming imagery that appears throughout ‘No One Was Driving The Car’. The album’s narrative sees mundane suffering interrupted by flashbacks of drowning, dead animals, decaying relationships, and secondhand suicides.
It’s expected some of the other acts will be released ahead of the album’s release in September.
On the touring front, La Dispute will make a brief return to the UK in July. They’ll be playing a one-off headline show in Leeds before performing two sets at the 2000trees Festival.
July
10th Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
11th The Forest stage – 2000 Trees Festival, Cheltenham
12th The Axiom stage – 2000 Trees Festival, Cheltenham
1. I Shaved My Head
2. Man with Hands and Ankles Bound
3. Autofiction Detail
4. Environmental Catastrophe Film
5. Self-Portrait Backwards
6. The Field
7. Sibling Fistfight at Mom’s Fiftieth / The Un-sound
8. Landlord Calls the Sheriff In
9. Steve
10. Top-Sellers Banquet
11. Saturation Diver
12. I Dreamt of a Room with All My Friends
13. No One Was Driving the Car
14. End Times Sermon
Pre-order here
