La Dispute: Autofiction Detail
Michigan’s post hardcore luminaries La Dispute have just unleashed their cinematic fifth studio album, No One Was Driving The Car. Vocalist and lyricist Jordan Dreyer connected with The Note to discuss the new full-length, imaginative storytelling, the generational diversity of the band’s devotees, film and so much more.
Words Will Oakeshott // Image @gingerdope
“A gifted storyteller should be able to tell their stories in different genres, mediums, and platforms. The art of storytelling is the same since civilisation began. Only the way of telling it has changed because of technology.” - Kailin Gow.
Kailin Gow is an award-winning director, writer, producer, and actress, acquiring over 24 film awards and 47 nominations. She is also a prizewinning author, having sold over 5.5 million books, some of which have been adapted into films and TV series, as well as video games. Remarkably, she has published hundreds of books in an array of genres, including middle grade, new adult/college romance, thriller and non-fiction career/travel/self-help categories.
Assuredly, Gow knows a lot about storytelling.
Michigan’s La Dispute essentially began in the “basement scene”. A very DIY punk-driven musical environment, where bands would perform at house shows, generally in the basement. In these primitive stages, Jordan Dreyer had undertaken the role of vocalist, but had never considered himself a singer. His art form of choice was writing, specifically poetry and storytelling.
As Kailin Gow expressed above: “A gifted storyteller should be able to tell their stories in different genres, mediums, and platforms.” Now, over two decades later, with five studio full-lengths and an uncountable number of EPs, Dreyer is still composing truly phenomenal prose through the medium of music. La Dispute’s fifth LP, No One Was Driving The Car, is a striking testament to his narrative virtuosity.
“All of the songs on the record, in some way, are told from the perspective of a principal character. We sort of wanted to tell a story without the standard sort of narrative arc,” Jordan describes from his car in sunny Seattle, having just finished work and thankfully allocating some of his free time to talk (again) with this scribe in Adelaide, South Australia.
“The record begins in the present day, in a particular place, in a moment of crisis, and then in the song ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’, there's sort of a shift back to what a moment of crisis at a certain point in your life makes you do. And for me, that was to consider everything that led to it, and to sort of internalise your environment and how external things enacted their influence on you.”
So, the character revisits the past to understand their behaviour in a crisis, then what happens?
“That section that ends with the song ‘Steve’, after ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’, is like tracing or recounting specific moments that had some particular influence.” Dreyer pauses for a moment, as if reliving his own story and discovering further realisations about the novella in a new light, then continues, “And then you sort of have this time, this moment out of time and space, this cataclysm that happens in ‘Top-seller's Banquet’. From that point to the end of the record, you're sort of somewhere in an unnamed future and finding a moment of resignation in how you have found the character, finding a sense of fulfilment in a volatile world.”
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Jordan’s explanations could realistically be interpreted in a way that the magnetic lyricist is actually discussing a novel, or even a film - not a new album. In essence, this is a major part of the La Dispute enchantment for thousands of followers of the Michiganians worldwide; they are not just excited for a new record, they are ecstatic for an experience of fascinating storytelling.
The aforementioned ‘Top-Seller’s Banquet’ subscribes wholly to this sentiment. A powerful eight-minute piece of literary work that possesses imagery as entrancing as Wildlife’s ‘King Park’, but more aligned with the tale of 2010’s Academy Award-winning movie Black Swan, and even some Stanley Kubrick cinematography. It then plagued this scribe to ask Dreyer whether the exploratory musicianship of La Dispute actually triggered these theatrical imaginings for his poetry.”
“Yeah, definitely,” he states with razor-sharp eagerness. “And there's a few songs on the record; I mean, the record as a whole, we sort of conceptualised as our version of a film. Obviously minus visual accompaniment. But that song, more than anything, is our attempt at painting a visual image. And I think the Kubrick observation is pretty astute too.”
Would you be interested in undertaking film production or script writing outside of La Dispute?
“You know, I do love film. I do find myself drawn to it as much as I am any medium. But yeah, I think that that would require a considerable amount of learning, and I think that I'm better suited elsewhere at this point in my life (laughs). Although who knows, we'll see.”
Although considered a witticism of sorts, the enigmatic indie-jazz-post hardcore musical approach La Dispute recreates with every new release has come under a subgenre classification entitled “The Wave”. An abbreviated form of the title “The New Wave Of Post Hardcore”, which other astounding avant-garde punk acts such as Touché Amoré and Pianos Become The Teeth are also assigned to. With that being said, the delightfully dynamic soundscape that Dreyer, drummer Brad Vander Lug, bassist Adam Vass and guitarists Chad Sterenberg and Corey Stroffolino incredibly orchestrate is assuredly beyond transfixing.
Evidence for this exists with the astonishing art the five-piece creates and its subsequent timelessness. In 2023, the quintet toured Australia in celebration of the 10th Anniversary (plus one-or-two years) of their seminal record Wildlife. Spectacularly, the shows were a great success, but what Dreyer and his remarkable bandmates noticed elatedly was the diversity in age of their admirers.
“When we came back from the COVID quarantine and started playing Wildlife, it was like, there's a lot of people here who were quite ‘wee’, when this record came out, you know?” Jordan states with a chuckle, before elaborating further - “We're doing a 10 year anniversary tour, 12 years after the record came out, because of the delay. There's a lot of people who are 15, 16, 17 and it's fucking cool! It’s so cool!
“There are pros and cons to our current music economy and the way people listen. But I think the accessibility and the way information is shared has some cool benefits, introducing people who are younger to something that came out of an earlier era in their life. Where otherwise, you might have needed somebody to hand you a record, or recommend you something at the record store. Now, it's the case where people just find stuff on the internet and not the shows. We love that!”
“The art of storytelling is the same since civilisation began. Only the way of telling it has changed because of technology.”
Look where technology and brilliant storytelling have taken La Dispute.
La Dispute’s No One Was Driving the Car is out now via Epitaph Records.
