Photo Credit: Martin
La Dispute have released their new single Environmental Catastrophe Film, the second act from their upcoming album No One Was Driving the Car – their first new album in six years.
Vocalist Jordan Dreyer comments:
“The second act – more or less the thematic centre of the record – is a single song split into three parts. It begins with a boy beside a creek-bed in a wooded area near home, holding a snapping turtle above the flowing water, before tracing its winding path to the river around which the city was first built, and through a brief history of the city itself – its settlement, the creation of the Christian reformed church, and the furniture industry that dominated its early economic growth.
“From there we return to the boy beside the creek. He sees his own lack of control in the flailing creature he holds, then again at church, listening to a sermon delivered on the Calvinist doctrines of predestination, man’s innate and total depravity, and the irresistible grace of his family’s god. At the end of it, he returns for the first time in adulthood to that same church, at the funeral of an old friend dead by suicide, from which the conversation shifts back to the creek as metaphor for life and time, and to what we ultimately maintain the least control over in life: that we can change neither the fact it moves nor the direction it ceaselessly does.
“In the final section, the city’s history of the furniture manufacturing returns as additional metaphor, presenting us as un-hewn wood, locked within the lathe of time and against its blade turned, to carve away with each rotation fragments of self en-route to new forms – perhaps useful, perhaps beautiful, perhaps not. And as the layers shaved away fall to ground, they are swept up at day’s end and thrown inside the furnace: to burn and be breathed in as smoke, felt as heat, and to return one day as rain from the atmosphere in which they’ve dissipated. What’s left on the lathe is given purpose – placed as slats in chair backs or as table legs – and from this image the focus narrows again: to life with another – where, ultimately, the narrator finds his own comfort against the tumult – via the furniture moved and used by them from one shared home to another, and the person with whom he’s shared them.”
No One Was Driving the Car is due for release on 5th September 2025 via Epitaph Records, available to pre-order HERE.
See La Dispute live at one of the following dates:
July 2025
Thu 10th – LEEDS, UK – Brudenell Social Club SOLD OUT
Fri 11th – CHELTENHAM, UK – 2000trees Festival
Sat 12th – CHELTENHAM, UK – 2000trees Festival
Mon 14th – HANNOVER, DE – MusikZentrum SOLD OUT
Tue 15th – NÜRBNERG, DE – Hirsch
Wed 16th – KARLSRUHE, DE – Substage
Fri 18th – COLOGNE, DE – Open Stage Suedbruecke* SOLD OUT
Sat 19th – HERK-DE-STAD, BE – Rock Herk Festival
Sun 20th – CUXHAVEN, DE – Deichbrand Festival
September 2025
Fri 5th – DETROIT, MI – St. Andrew’s Hall
Sat 6th – TORONTO, ON – Phoenix Concert Theatre
Sun 7th – CLEVELAND, OH – Grog Shop
Mon 8th – PITTSBURGH, PA – Spirit Hall
Wed 10th – BOSTON, MA – Paradise Rock Club
Thu 11th – BROOKLYN, NY – Warsaw
Fri 12th – PHILADELPHIA, PA – Union Transfer
Sat 13th – WASHINGTON, DC – Howard Theater
Sun 14th – CHARLOTTE, NC – Neighborhood Theatre
Tue 16th – ORLANDO, FL – The Beacham
Wed 17th – ATLANTA, GA – Masquerade
Thu 18th – NASHVILLE, TN – Basement East
Fri 19th – COLUMBUS, OH – King of Clubs
Sat 20th – INDIANAPOLIS, IN – Deluxe at Old National Centre
*w/ Enter Shikari
