Conceptual band La Dispute have released three new songs as Act IV of their forthcoming album ‘No One Was Driving the Car’ — their first full-length since 2019’s ‘Panorama’ – released September 5th on Epitaph. The album is heavily influenced by the 2017 psychological thriller ‘First Reformed’, and the first track of Act IV, ‘Top-Sellers Banquet,‘ imitates the film’s iconic levitation scene as the band’s lyricist and vocalist Jordan Dreyer narrates a ballet performance at a marketing company’s banquet, where the dancers become suspended in the air.
Dreyer explains: “The next act was heavily inspired by a particular scene in First Reformed, where the film’s two primary characters connect through a ritual of remembrance and comfort, traveling beyond their plane of reality into some otherworldly beyond. The record’s spiritual/metaphysical event happens here, in the middle of a banquet held by the multi-level marketing company mentioned in the fourth song from the prior act in celebration of their fiscal year’s highest performers. after a welcome speech, and while the provided entertainment (ballet dancers accompanied by a small orchestra) begins between tables on the floor, a sudden flash of light occurs, an indescribable sound accompanying it, and light begins to fall through the hall’s high ceilings down, focused only on the non-employees in attendance (the dancers, the servers, the players, valets), at which point they begin to rise impossibly skyward, leaving the others invited attendees and higher ups behind.
Jordan continues: “The narrator returns in the next song, discussing again the slow dissociation mentioned heavily in act one, through the image of a saturation diver tangled in his oxygen line. he realizes he remains on earth after the “rapture” of the previous track passes, and reflects again on the journey taken to arrive there, alone and un-beamed up.”
“We return home in the final entry of the penultimate block, in the midst of his unaddressed malaise and disintegration. the self-examination concludes in self-loathing and collapse—his partner preparing to leave, his desperate pleas unheeded, all of life and comfort broken in unfixable ways—by his own failure to address and correct. we’re left with, effectively, the narrator lamenting some combination of control he never had and control he failed to establish. he pleas for the chance to correct, to be given one more opportunity to not just push back against odds stacked against him (and all of us), but to most of all recognize and care for what, despite everything, has given him security and meaning.”
Act IV drops alongside a new video for ‘Saturation Diver‘, directed and edited by bassist Adam Vass during the band’s recent European tour dates. Each act has been arriving with a companion documentary directed by Martin.