Hi, everyone. Badthony Gastano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new La Dispute album, No One Was Driving The Car.

Here we have the newest and fifth full-length LP from Michigan emo and post-hardcore outfit, La Dispute, a group that was founded in the mid-2000s but managed to really catch on in the early 2010s alongside a new generation of bands that were bringing some grit, some intensity, a punk spirit back into the fold with these genres.

As years of sugar-coated emo pop led to a commercial bubble that popped and left much of the underground to pick up the pieces and keep things interesting, which La Dispute did not only with super versatile and dynamic rock instrumentation, but also poetic and high concept lyrics from frontman Jordan Dreyer, which led to some of the most mind-blowing and epic songs to ever grace the screamo genre, be it "Such Small Hands" or "King Park", which comes off of the band's amazing 2011 Wildlife record, an album that I really cannot recommend enough, even if it is a very dense and demanding listen. I mean, the album is over 10 years old now, and it's still an amazing listen to this day.

Now, subsequent records from La Dispute saw the band streamlining things and experimenting a bit, which led to some mixed results. There's never been a point, in my opinion where La Dispute has completely lost hold of their appeal. But with their last official full-length album, 2019's Panorama, the novelty storytelling and emotional punch many fans have come to expect just were not quite there, due to so many bland art rock passages, underwhelming mood pieces, and just a lack of gripping ideas.

So since then, for the past six years, things have been pretty quiet for a lot of dispute on the album front. I mean, the most eventful thing we have seen happen over that course of time was the fourth installment of the Here Here EP series they've been on, which dropped last year. And that project seems to have been, now, like the band taking the opportunity to get the blood flowing again and build up to the massive undertaking that is this new album, No One Was Driving the Car, a release that was put in chunks and then was fully assembled into a project on release day. It's somehow longer and more multi-phase than Wildlife was.

While longer doesn't necessarily mean better, I am definitely hearing a renewed sense of hunger, ambition, and sense of purpose on this album, especially in Jordan's writing, as I am pretty consistently impressed with this record's focused and intense creativity around themes like religiosity, the rapture, death, end times, modern tech, familial trauma, and the inequity built into modern society. I really do think this record features, again, some of Jordan's best writing in years especially on tracks like "Top Seller's Banquet".

Without even digging into the metaphor of this song,,the imagery of a dinner event that turns into a blood bath with many people who are unaffected by the chaos around them, going on about their business as if nothing's happening... It's deeply chilling, especially as Jordan describes the various goingson here, as if we are watching it happen from numerous angles, like in a film.

I'm also loving how he puts the feelings of isolation, longing, and alienation on "I Dreamt of a Room With All My Friends I Could Not Get In". Truly a classic in La Dispute terms as it does a great job of taking these relatable interpersonal feelings and then blowing them up into a mushroom cloud.

That being said, these tracks and many of my favorite moments on the album seem to come more toward the end. I do feel like for a good chunk of the first leg of this record, the band does struggle to find their footing a bit. Like the opening track where it seems like the band is really trying to simplify the drums and guitar work, maybe as a means of maximizing the impact of Jordan's words on the song.

But honestly, with as intense as his vocals are, he just sounds unsupported by the boring quarter note riffs that are just plotting away. Because while it is true that La Dispute's lyricism and vocals truly are like the selling point of the band and what separates them from a lot of their contemporaries, the detailed Midwest emo-tinged guitar passages that painted a lot of their previous work were also what kept things interesting. Certainly more interesting than whatever is happening at the start of this. Or on other tracks deeper into the album, like "Landlord Calls the Sheriff In", which, again, is packed with slow, basic, and uninspired bass and guitar passages. Not to mention Jordan's forced, unnatural, raspy vocal delivery that's injecting an urgency and darkness into his lyrics when I wish he would just let the story and the words on this track speak for themselves because the topic is really quite dark enough.

But yeah, the first leg on this record really reaches a low point, in my opinion, with "Autofiction Detail", where the mindnumbing pacing of the instrumentation meets a muttered vocal delivery from Jordan that feels like I'm listening to some lost, tortured '90s post-hardcore band, like maybe a combination of the slowest moments and passages from a mewithoutyou record, and a little bit of Slint for good measure. I can see what it's going for, but whether or not it's pulling it off is another story.

Even the guitars on "Environmental Catastrophe Film" are a bit lacking in comparison to Jordan's ultra-intense vocal delivery, because you have these world-ending screams around the midpoint and the end of the track, too. But the playing and production is just nowhere near as big as the vocals are. And yes, it is a tall order to fill, but I know the band can do it.

In fact, they do do it on songs like "Steve", for example, which reaches similar peaks of vocal intensity, but somehow the band manages to pull off an explosive, thrilling screamo anthem on this one that may not necessarily be as adventurous as some other moments on this album, but at least it's playing to the band's strengths and sounds like it could go toe to toe with any number of tracks from their older records.

But with that being said, there are a handful of moments toward the end of the album where the band's experiments really begin to pan out, and I just think they hit their stride creatively, like with the song "I Dreamt..." that I mentioned earlier, much of which is done in like 5/8 time, and with a persistently fantastic vocal performance from Jordan. I also love the various ways in which the band throughout the record uses drone-ier instrumentation and sometimes these lengthy vocal snippet passages, spoken word passages, to enhance the drama of the performances in the album.

I was also super surprised by the sudden metal riffs that ended off the track "The Field", which somehow were one of the most fitting moments on the entire album. And honestly, wouldn't really mind hearing La Dispute dabble a little bit more in metal here and there if it's going to sound like this.

As far as the final moments on the album are concerned, the title track, for example – while I do like Jordan's lyrics quite a bit on this track, I do wish there was more to the song, instrumentally, other than just the simple acoustic backing that takes up the entirety of the song.

And while I don't love "End Times Sermon" as a closer, I do see what the track brings to the table in terms of a sense of finality because it does ask the big questions that ultimately do fuel a lot of the sadness and anguish and confusion that defines the material of this record. Again, don't love it as a song as much as I do just a closing message.

But yeah, I'm torn on this La Dispute record in some ways. While I wouldn't say I love it much more than their last, mostly because it is so all over the place, some things it does well, some things it doesn't do quite as well. It's still nice to hear the band back at it once again and really begin to hone some of the new ideas they've been tinkering with for a handful of years now, be it on their last album or their latest Here Here EP.

But yeah, even if I am not in love with this album per se, La Dispute continues to be one of the most unique and interesting bands in this style. And hopefully, we hear a new album sooner rather than later, where some of these kinks are worked out, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 6 on this one.

Anthony Fantano. La Dispute. Forever.