No One Was Driving the Car is largely built from analog instruments, losing the electronic interludes from Panorama and their latest Here, Hear EP. The band—Dreyer, along with drummer Brad Vander Lugt, guitarists Chad Morgan-Sterenberg and Corey Stroffolino, and bassist Adam Vass—produced the record entirely themselves in New South Wales, Australia, surrounded by a national forest; field recordings of their tropical environs snake their way into the album’s final mix. More than its thematic shifts, the album’s composition is a distinct, ambitious, and captivating step up for La Dispute: The discordant riffs on “I Shaved My Head” set the tone for the record, with a bluesy bassline that suggests nothing good’s ahead. The gentle strumming on “Self-Portait Backwards” and “Saturation Diver” underscores the desperation in Dreyer’s lyrics, fingerpicked melodies a foil to the blunt instrument of his voice. There’s hints of early Sabbath, Slint, Orchid—a lineage of alienation that La Dispute carries on in the face of modern horrors. The band, most of whom were raised in the Christian Reform Church (the subject of fellow Grand Rapidian Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, which Dreyer cites as a major inspiration for this record), reveals its moral code through religious allegories. There’s the woman “narcanned back to life” on Easter Sunday in “Autofiction Detail.” Another, glimpsed through a window, appears as an “archangel” standing over her victim on “Man With Hands And Ankles Bound.” “Landlord Calls the Sheriff In” follows a woman sucked into a pyramid scheme, only to be hit with the extremely Protestant “try a little harder now” when her sales aren’t quite meeting the mark. Still, these barons get their due: “No yachts will drift off when the rapture comes,” Dreyer barks, not the first nor last reference to prophetic resurrection on the record. No One Was Driving the Car is an inspired departure from interpersonal drama in favor of incisive critique, a confident step forward into an uncertain world.
