Shared Anxieties: La Dispute Reflect on 'No One Was Driving The Car' Prior to UK Shows
Wednesday, 21 January 2026
Written by Jack Butler-Terry
Photo: Martin
Music can be visceral, and bands such as La Dispute really amplify that characteristic. For 20 years, the Grand Rapids post-hardcore group have told raw stories in increasingly brutal ways, leading up to their latest offering, ‘No One Was Driving The Car’.
Based on life in an increasingly chaotic world, the record finds La Dispute plumbing the depths of human frailty and how draining things can be when you’re constantly surrounded by technology, societal pressures and a system that feels rigged. It’s a breathless and powerful piece of work that further exemplifies their penchant for filling every ounce of their work with emotion.
Prior to their latest bout of touring, which will take them to Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff and London between February 18 and 21, followed by a run of dates in mainland Europe, we sat down with frontman Jordan Dreyer to talk about the record, and the toll that being a storyteller can have on a person.
How has it been to see the reactions to ‘No One Was Driving The Car’?
“It’s been really great. I think this record was a long time coming, and was thrown into motion in a way by the Covid quarantine years, and by the industry shutting down. But our [process] has always been pretty dependent on gathering together in a room. We had a lot of forced time off after years of touring consistently, and making a record not too long before that, so, I think we all felt pretty enthusiastic about making a record in a way that we haven’t since the very early days.
“You reprioritise when you can’t have a thing that has been the most important part of our lives for the entirety of our adulthood, so I think we came at it from a place of excitement and everything fell out of us in a way that was really refreshing. To feel so proud of something, and then introduce it to the world and have it received positively is really encouraging, and to see the way that people connect to the subject matter, I think, is very gratifying, too. That’s sort of the unifying aspect of life in the 21st century: we’re all experiencing a lot of the same anxieties, and to see that reflected in the way that people reacted was quite comforting.
“Then, to have the opportunity to perform the songs live, and see people sing along, makes us excited as a band, because we’ve been playing the same songs for so long. We’re proud of the ones we’ve just made but there’s always a part of us that’s concerned that people might be a bit disappointed when we play a set that’s half or more songs that have only come out in the last six months. But, every night, we get a positive reaction. It’s like, ‘I'm not doing this, entirely on a selfish level.’ It’s been really fun.”
Do you have any particular favourite tracks on the album? You’ve just finished the first leg of the tour, so are there any live standouts?
“I really love the song Environmental Catastrophe Film. It’s the big high point of the first part of the record and I’m proud of the way that story is told on my end. We played that every night live as an encore, and it was really fun to be able to play a new track last. It was the right choice, too, based on the reaction and based on how it felt. We also played the title track on the record. There are four guitars and vocals, and it was really fun to do something different; fun for me too and the part of my brain that loves to perform. It’s pretty dependent on my contribution, so that was really fun.
“I also love a song called Self-Portrait Backwards. It’s acoustic and we haven’t played that one live yet, but I really enjoyed writing the words to it. It was a song that Corey [Stroffolino, guitar] wrote for the most part, and bringing that to life was really fun. Having a different challenge vocally was satisfying.”
You said it yourself, you’re telling big, important stories, and the way that you write them and you perform them, it’s very creative, it’s very involved. How is that for you on the writing side?
“It’s simultaneously my favorite and least favorite thing in the world to do. It’s not generally fun when you’re in the process — at least not in the way that we typically define fun — because it’s a lot of tedious editing. I tend to obsess over not just the arc of a story, but the particular words chosen. In the context of the record being one whole piece organized around a central theme, there’s a lot of meticulous tinkering, and consideration of the music. That part can be a blessing and a curse, because left to my own devices, I would have a very difficult time stopping writing, but having a structure to write to is helpful for me to visualise how to accomplish whatever story inspired it.
“It’s a curse as well, though, in that it’s not the same as if I was just writing on a sheet of paper to nothing. I can arrange words however I want, rhythmically, and when you’re writing to a song that your bandmates have written, you have to be mindful of how it fits into the structure, if it’s competing with the rhythm, if it works in the time signature. You also have to make certain that what you’re doing remains interesting, that the patterns don’t repeat so often that they become tired. So there’s a lot of different factors to consider, and it is difficult. But the end result, I think, is the most fun thing. Seeing it come to fruition, and feeling excited, or hearing the excitement of your bandmates, is a feeling that is pretty unparalleled in my creative life.”
La Dispute are among the best when it comes to exposition and lore and backstory and you certainly give the fanbase a lot to run with. Is that a whole different beast, or does that come with the writing?
“Yeah, I think that because we have always been fans of music, and as people who would consider art and engagement with it to be a part of our individual DNA, we all gravitate towards something that we can dig into. I think we’ve all been pretty fascinated since the outset of our band, and remain that way in later adulthood. We love when you can build greater context, and I think that it’s always been a part of our band to do so, because we put a considerable amount of thought into what we do both lyrically and musically. We think a lot about how parts of our own music connect to other parts of our music.
“Art is valuable to me because it helps me understand the experience of being alive, and challenges me to see new perspectives, or to seek out new information, and having the opportunity to use what we do as an opportunity to introduce more to people, I think it makes the experience of creation more fulfilling, but it also makes the experience for those who are interested in taking that deep dive more gratifying. And we do consider that to a degree during writing, but I think it mostly comes naturally just from how we operate.”
You’ve been a band for more than 20 years — how have things changed?
“I think a lot of it is just being a well-oiled machine. I think that the intention has never changed, you know? Even as this has gone from something we did very impulsively to deciding at 18 that this was gonna be the thing that we did. In hindsight, that was a fucking brash decision, but you’re unencumbered at that age by the responsibilities that you acquire as you get older, and I think that even as this has become the thing that we do to put bread on the table, we’ve been very deliberate about keeping our ethical convictions as the north point on the compass, and trying to balance those considerations can be tricky. For the most part, though, I think we’ve navigated it pretty successfully. Partly because we love art — that’s the thing that I would say, outside of personal relationships, contributes the most to each of our lives.
“But we’re a punk band, and that was what inspired us to get together in the first place, and that’s the community in which we felt most at peace. That has never changed. You still feel the same way on a stage in front of 1,200 people that you did in a basement for 20. I think that we’re much better at what we do. You learn a lot about what you want from your music, and you acquire more skills to get there, and I think that’s evident in this new record, We’re maybe a little more particular about how we perform live than maybe when we were 20, and there’s a little more consideration of how performances go, and what they sound like, and how you move on stage. For the most part, though, I think this band has really just stayed the same and has gotten to be more finely tuned as time has gone by.”
La Dispute’s ‘No One Was Driving The Car’ is out now on Epitaph.
La Dispute Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Wed February 18 2026 - GLASGOW SWG3 TV Studio
Thu February 19 2026 - MANCHESTER Club Academy
Fri February 20 2026 - CARDIFF Tramshed
Sat February 21 2026 - LONDON Electric Ballroom
Mon February 23 2026 - LUXEMBOURG Rockhal (Luxembourg)
Tue February 24 2026 - MAINZ KUZ (Germany)
Wed February 25 2026 - MUNICH Backstage Werk (Germany)
Thu February 26 2026 - VIENNA WUK (Austria)
Fri February 27 2026 - BUDAPEST A38 (Hungary)
Sat February 28 2026 - PRAGUE Rock Cafe (Czech Republic)
Mon March 02 2026 - DRESDEN Beatpol (Germany)
Tue March 03 2026 - LEIPZIG Taubchenthal (Germany)
Thu March 05 2026 - WARSAW Proxima (Poland)
Fri March 06 2026 - BERLIN ASTRA Kulturhaus (Germany)
Sat March 07 2026 - HAMBURG Fabrik (Germany)
Sun March 08 2026 - COPENHAGEN Pumpehuset (Denmark)
Tue March 10 2026 - COLOGNE Live Music Hall (Germany)
Wed March 11 2026 - HAARLEM Patronaat (Netherlands)
Thu March 12 2026 - ANTWERP Trix (Belgium)
Fri March 13 2026 - STUTTGART Im Wizemann (Germany)
Sat March 14 2026 - PARIS La Maroquinerie (France)
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