Alternative Press teamed up with La Dispute for an exclusive tri-color clear/red/green vinyl variant of No One Was Driving The Car, limited to 300 copies. Head to the AP Shop to grab yours.
Grand Rapids progressive post-hardcore veterans La Dispute have announced their first album in six years, No One Was Driving The Car, due Sept. 5 via Epitaph. The self-produced album is said to be inspired by the 2017 psychological thriller First Reformed, and the title comes from a quote by a police officer about a lethal self-driving Tesla crash that vocalist Jordan Dreyer read in a news article. The album is broken up into multiple acts, and today the first act — the album’s first three songs — has been released. Dreyer says:
It begins with a man examining his own slow dissociation from himself while shaving his head alone in a bathroom at night, then shifts through a neighbor’s open window to a conversation about control and desire, framed via the image of a man seen through it: bound on the floor with a woman standing before him, presumably a sex worker. When the woman exits the building (her companion still tied up), the narrator leaves his own, following less her than the idea represented by her inside his own struggle to reconnect to desires for life severed by time, self, and circumstance, or perhaps fleeing the implication he draws from the man left behind (his helplessness, maybe, or else his confidence to pursue something complicated where the narrator has so consistently failed). The third song follows him on that destination-less late night walk, among the street people and their disasters, ending where he had the whole night subconsciously always headed: the hospital where his partner works, at which point an internal reckoning occurs.
Read more: The May album releases in alternative, rock, metal, and beyond
Along with releasing the first three songs, La Dispute have also put out a video for album opener “I Shaved My Head” (directed by Steven Paseshnik and La Dispute’s own Adam Vass), and you can check out that video and stream the other two tracks below.
La Dispute will support No One Was Driving The Car on a North American tour that begins the same day the album comes out. Find all dates for that tour below as well.
La Dispute – 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”
La Dispute 2025 tour dates
EU/UK TOUR DATES
07/10 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
07/11 – Cheltenham, UK – 2000 Trees Festival
07/12 – Cheltenham, UK – 2000 Trees Festival
07/14 – Hannover, DE – MusikZentrum
07/15 – Nürnberg, DE – Hirsch
07/16 – Karlsruhe, DE – Substage
07/18 – Cologne, DE – Open Stage Suedbruecke (w/ Enter Shikari)
07/19 – Herk-de-Stad, BE – Rock Herk Festival
07/20 – Cuxhaven, DE – Deichbrand Festival
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES
09/05 – Detroit, MI – St. Andrew’s Hall
09/06 – Toronto, ON – Phoenix Concert Theatre
09/07 – Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop
09/08 – Pittsburgh, PA – Spirit Hall
09/10 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club
09/11 – Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw
09/12 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
09/13 – Washington, DC – Howard Theater
09/14 – Charlotte, NC – Neighborhood Theatre
09/16 – Orlando, FL – The Beacham
09/17 – Atlanta, GA – Masquerade
09/18 – Nashville, TN – Basement East
09/19 – Columbus, OH – King of Clubs
09/20 – Indianapolis, IN – Deluxe at Old National Centre
