September 2025 AOTM

La Dispute - No One Was Driving the Car 

Tracks 14

Runtime 1hr 5mins

Favorite Tracks Man with Hands and Ankles Bound, Environmental Catastrophe Film, Sibling Fistfight at Mom's Fiftieth / The Un - Sound, Landlord Calls the Sheriff In, Steve, I Dreamt of a Room with All My Friends I Could Not Get In, End Times Sermon

 

There are very few songs that are as ruthlessly undoing as La Dispute’s 2011 hit King Park. It’s earth shattering. Lead singer Jordan Dreyer’s prose and descriptions, as he tells this story of a teenager accidentally killing a child in a drive-by shooting, is vivid, uncomfortable, far too close. Set to a driving, almost reckless guitar riff, it builds and builds and builds until it finally zooms in on the finale: the shooter, hiding in a motel room, surrounded by cops, holding the murder weapon, with one idea left, one way out. Dreyer screams that idea, his voice cracking, breaking under its own weight, one final question.

“Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?”

Since releasing that song, it seems that somehow, La Dispute has only gotten better. They haven’t slowed down or backed off even a little bit. Dreyer’s lyricism and powerful delivery floors me again and again, and mixed with their driving emo post hardcore style, they have made one of the most moving albums I have heard this year. Their eighth studio album “No One Was Driving The Car” asks the question, how much of a film can you make using only sound? For La Dispute, the answer is quite a lot, actually.

It’s a story in extremes. Most of the members of La dispute grew up in Grand Rapids, MI, in the Christian Reformed Church. The CRC believes in predestination, the idea that god has a plan for your whole life and everything that happens in it was always going to happen. It is a ruthless, merciless god. The small comfort you receive from knowing there may be blessings in your future that will reach you no matter what, is immediately and infinitely dwarfed by the idea that, if it is his plan for you, there is nothing that can save you from hell. Every ounce of suffering is unavoidable. Every sin you commit was never your choice but you will still be punished for it all the same.

It’s hard for someone to fully comprehend, much more for a child. It feels claustrophobic, smothering, the eye of god bearing down on small suburban life. That inevitability, that lack of control, wraps around each track like vines. Dreyer’s lyrics, as the main character of this film, thrash violently against those vines, dripping with contempt.

The album starts with a slow realization, the more subtle effects of god’s watchful gaze. In “I Shaved My Head” the protagonist, unable to recognize himself changes his appearance hoping it will match how unrecognizable he feels. In the following songs he wanders the streets at night, finding strange urges to pray and watching the suffering around him, unable to do anything, feeling hollow. The recognization of the hold the CRC has is more passive in this part of the album, an observation, a watching of time pass. In “Sibling fistfight at Mom’s Fiftieth/The Un-Sound”, he repeats the same line over and over again: “It’s fine that’s life”.

But the next track takes a hard turn toward the sinister. “When the Landlord Calls The Sheriff In” is about Amway, the religious pyramid scheme. Dreyer sings from the perspective of a recruiter, silver dripping from the sides of their lips, telling you how a “fiefdom by the coastline” can be all yours if you just sell vitamins from your own home. It gets angrier and angrier, telling you the sacrifices you will have to make if you fail to meet your deadlines, until finally ending the song with the lines
“No camel passes through the needles eye
and you’re running out of time
No yachts will drift off when the rapture comes”.
Almost a premonition of the rapture craze of September 23, which Dreyer even goes on to conjure. “Top-Seller’s Banquet” shows a feast of the rich and powerful, too raucous in their revelry to notice the servers, valets, and dancers welcomed into heaven in their stead.

Dreyers lyric delivery isn’t for everyone. It’s fried, off key, sometimes atonal. It makes it feel close, normal, like an everyday person who’s been pushed too far. It stands out even more in contrast with the beautiful instrumentals on this album. Songs like the title track, Environmental Catastrophe Film, Sibling Fistfight-, have these gorgeous floating arpeggiated riffs paired and juxtaposed with this super heavy distorted bass. And on every track the drummer gives a masterclass in complementing every other piece of the band. Even with such a strong emphasis on lyric performance I honestly believe this album would still be a really standout piece of music as an instrumental.

This album more than any other this year makes it clear to me how terrifyingly inadequate my words are when it comes to describing music. I have scrapped and restarted this article around five times and I still feel like I’m trying to describe the color blue to someone who’s never seen it. If you have ever enjoyed an album I’ve recommended, please do not skip this one. It is a truly singular piece of art. 


 

Other Albums from this month I enjoyed

Shallowater - God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars

  • This very nearly beat La Dispute for album of the year. Atmospheric shoegazey slowcore alt-country its a bunch of my favorite things all wrapped up into a beautiful package. Great lyrics, moving instrumentals, a masterclass in anticipation and payoff. If you miss Pinegrove you will love this.

Dance Gavin Dance - Pantheon

  • It actually infuriates me that DGD are still this good. As a band they have some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard. "I'm smoking weed out of a pussy filled with money, I like this" and "I am a million fucking bucks / I am a thousand fucking fucks / Your bitch is dead / she was hit by a truck / What the fuck?" just to name a few. But in spite of all of this, stands lead guitarist Will Swan. He is, to put it lightly, easily one of the best guitarists alive and his songwriting is so good it somehow continues to make up for how utterly ass these lyrics are. And this album showcases some of Swan's best work every song goes so hard I can't not mention it here.

Ho99o9 - Tomorrow We Escape

  • Absolutely blew me away. Ive been aware of them for a long time as a Death Grips fan but they have never sounded this good before. They make use of everything both Metal and Industrial Hip-Hop has to offer, all on one perfectly paced album. If you're into the heavy stuff, this is grey poupon.

KFC Murder Chicks - 223

  • Another gift to the fans of the heavy stuff, bleeding edge digital hardcore.

Frost Children - SISTER

  • Some really delicious y2k edm. If you liked the new Ninajirachi album definitely check this out.