Bordering on one of the most overlooked rising names in post-hardcore is La Dispute, a five-piece from Michigan bearing a resemblance of early mewithoutyou. While this style is not the most accepted and may put you off to this band immediately due to the spoken-word nature of the vocals, I implore you to take a listen to not only the amazing musicianship strung throughout, but the superb literary abilities of vocalist Jordan Dreyer. With the aptitude for creating beautiful imagery and drawing the listener into an intriguing and complex narrative, the lyrics which are contained in this album are some of the most powerful to be listened to to date. With so much talent backing this band, the album as a whole lacks in no manner and is nothing short of a spectacle for all the hear.
Prior to opening the contents of this album, a listener may have already written them off for the pretentiously long title, Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair. But, if one had done their homework, the listener would know the title is taken from an Asian folk-tale that tells the story of a heavenly emperor’s daughter falling in love with a human. So, now that all pretentious assumptions are set aside, please press play. The album begins with a delicate and passionate track, “Such Small Hands”. The song contains an ethereal guitar line fronted by Dreyer’s shout/scream poetry blaring at you. You can immediately notice the poetic beauty of his words, and are drawn in from there. The ardor from the opening track never truly lets go of you throughout the entire course of this 55 minute extravaganza of passion and poetry.
As the album continues, you are led down a road of furious drumming and guitar lines, with what may seem like an ADD band as not much is held onto for long before sweeping you into something new. Whether it be a slow, clean interlude or a furious, heavy guitar driven section, La Dispute grabs you by the throat and screams at you with fervor you may have never experienced before. As Dreyer spits lines at you such as “I thought I heard a plane crashing but now I think it was your passion snapping” (“Such Small Hands”), “You came back and you brought floods. Wearing a necklace made of hearts that you’d dragged through the mud” (“Bury Your Flames”), and “If I can’t love you as a lover, I will love you as a friend. And I will lay a bed before you; keep you safe until the end,” you cannot help but feel as he feels and wish only for a resolution to the story told; a story of love of loss with the most sadistic taste in imagery at times.
As the album hits it’s climax in the 12-minute epic, “The Last Lost Continent,” it finally brings the story full swing with a painfully bright and bloody intro that leads into the positive message the songs have been waiting for: to keep your head up even in the darkest of moments and to not fear anything. The song contains many different sections and a long and tedious, yet worthwhile, build up into the outro. In gang shouts the band leads the album out as follows
“We are but hopeful children, and we’re the last of our kind.
But if we let our hearts move outward, I know we will never-
We are but friends and family, we are the last of our kind.
So hold my hand, I’ll lift your head up, and I promise we’ll be fine.
We are but hopeful lovers, and we are running out of time.
There’s so much stacking up against us, and we’re falling far behind.
We are but hopeful lovers, we are the last of our kind,
But if we let our hearts move outward, I know we will never-
We are but lovers, we are the last of our kind.
And if we let our hearts move outward, I know we will never-
We are but lovers, we are the last of our kind.
And if we let our hearts move outward, we will never die”
While the album may center around loss and sadness, it is the light in the darkness that is always the brightest. La Dispute creates a ferocious beast with their music, and are not to be underestimated with what is to come from them. With heavy lyrics backing their beautiful musicianship, they are a force to be reckoned with and more than worth your time.
