La Dispute Release Five-Track Act III From Upcoming Album 'No One Was Driving The Car'
Thursday, 10 July 2025
Written by Jon Stickler
Photo: Martin
La Dispute have shared five new songs that comprise Act III of their upcoming album, their first in six years.
Self-Portrait Backwards, The Field, Sibling Fistfight at Mom's Fiftieth / The Un-sound, Landlord Calls the Sheriff In, and Steve serve as the latest preview of 'No One Was Driving the Car', due out on September 5 via Epitaph Records. Vocalist Jordan Dreyer explained:
"The next act encompasses in more focused detail the narrator’s look backwards down the path, beginning at their shared home in the present day, where the dissociation introduced in act one as almost entirely a self-inclosed thing trickles outward and troubles the comfort outlined in the last section of the song preceding it. He examines his own life through imagined self-portraits, in various sequences of time (fractions of days first, then weeks, months, years), and through multiple specific events. from there, four critically influential events from his earlier life are detailed in four songs.
"First, a story from his early teenage years, where he and his brother - up north hunting with their father in the area where he and his own brother (the boys’ uncle, who has long lived far away elsewhere), and their father (who died when they were young) - stumble upon what they believe to be an abandoned paramilitary compound. in the middle of the field beside it they come to a hole dug in the ground full of deer carcasses. the narrator becomes fixated on the bodies below, unable to break his gaze from them, while the brother continues on toward the compound, a metaphor both for their diverging paths and for the obsessions/explanations that motivated them to take which ones they did.
"The second song happens a few years later, at their mother’s fiftieth birthday party, where several siblings - drunk and airing internal grievances - fight on the basement staircase while their mother contemplates what role her own actions as a parent played in their arrival at that moment and in the conflicted history that led up to it. in the second half of the song, the siblings are gathered at the parents’ house again, years after the fight, for a quarterly group birthday celebration for several of their own children.
"The third song occurs years on from there, with a pitch made to the partner of the narrator - working through undergrad at the time - from purveyors of a multi-level marketing company central to the history of grand rapids, and in some ways inextricably entwined with the christian reformed church mentioned earlier on the record (somewhat importantly, the rapture is invoked at the very end of the song, in a section discussing extraordinary wealth).
"The final song centres around the friend whose funeral appeared earlier in act two, and is presented as reflections of their shared experiences together in youth, chiefly a snowy night drifting in a car together across an empty church parking lot, and the crash that occurred when the car spun on ice to slide sidelong into a curb and embankment. the end of the song harkens back heavily to the second section of act two (the song 'Environmental Catastrophe Film') and represents a full-circle consideration of the control dictated to him via exposure to calvinist teachings in childhood".
Act III arrives alongside a video for Sibling Fistfight at Mom's Fiftieth/The Un-sound, directed, filmed, and edited by Dreyer, who also stars in the clip. Take a look below.
Previously, the Michigan quintet shared Act II from the album, featuring the epic, near nine-minute slow-burner Environmental Catastrophe Film, which followed the three-song Act I, comprising I Shaved My Head, Man with Hands and Ankles Bound, and Autofiction Detail. Additionally, each act is accompanied by a companion documentary, with Chapter I and two Chapter II available to watch now. Stay tuned for Chapter III.
The band will play Leeds' Brudenell Social Club tonight (July 10), ahead of an appearance at 2000trees festival this weekend. They'll also tour North America in September. Tickets are on sale now.
'No One Was Driving the Car' tracklist:
1. I Shaved My Head
2. Man with Hands and Ankles Bound
3. Autofiction Detail
4. Environmental Catastrophe Film
5. Self-Portrait Backwards
6. The Field
7. Sibling Fistfight at Mom's Fiftieth / The Un-sound
8. Landlord Calls the Sheriff In
9. Steve
10. Top-Sellers Banquet
11. Saturation Diver
12. I Dreamt of a Room with All My Friends
13. No One Was Driving the Car
14. End Times Sermon
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