La Dispute: A departure

The first track of La Dispute’s sophomore album Wildlife is accurately titled “a Departure.” Hailing from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the five piece post-hardcore, experimental rock group set the bar high for themselves, but more importantly, for other emerging post-hardcore bands three years ago.

And the band has managed to outdo the masterpiece that was Somewhere At The Bottom Of The River Between Vega And Altair from 2008. Fourteen tracks in total, Wildlifeis La Dispute more ambitiously poetic than ever before, and not every song is about love lost like it felt in Somewhere. I don’t think anyone’s disappointed about the lack of lyrics including “darling” or “lover.”  They may have served their purpose, but they’ve had their run.

Instead, Wildlife, out Oct. 4 on No Sleep Records, is replete with stories and inner monologues.  Each song reads like a poem, and hardly a line repeats itself. La Dispute has arguably paved and now re-paved the pathway for post-hardcore into a venue for literature, storytelling and musicality to mix. The band Defeater’s Empty Days & Sleepless Nights released through Bridge Nine Records in March this year is most comparable.

In Wildlife, both the melodies and lyrics feel even less forced than they did in Somewhere. The album feels like a developed set of memories. The track “I See Everything”  is a series of familial dates and events while a seven-year-old boy struggles with cancer. Vocalist Jordan Dryer concludes after the boy’s death, “Now six or seven years later, I’m devoid of all faith; I am empty of comfort, and I am weary of waiting.” Unlike Somewhere, the album doesn’t feel like an on-location, passion-for-passion’s-sake reaction to something that’s just happened — it’s wiser.

Dryer’s delivery isn’t overly-emotional for the material like it may have been prior. More subtle inflections show that Dryer is beyond screaming for screaming’s sake. The vocals in Wildlife are also less drawn-out and exaggerated. Because his tone is more believable and less juvenile, the album has managed to be even more heartbreaking.

The melodies follow suit. This time around, the music helps to convey the message in Dryer’s voice rather than vice versa. The guitar in the first half of “Safer in the Forest/Love Song for Poor Michigan” enhances the despair of the vocals and a feeling of tugging and struggle to “keep the rust at-bay.”

Dryer told NPR in an August interview that Wildlife sounds so different than anything they’ve done before because the vocals were all laid out before other band members wrote melodies.

“Having the story ahead of time allowed us to really push the emotions it contained and make them as [powerful] as possible musically, so there’s a greater depth in a way,” Dryer said to NPR.

The emotions Dryer mentions are sure to hit home for everyone. “Edit Your Hometown” depicts young adults’ sense of wanderlust to leave the city they’ve known, and “Harder Harmonies” is a person’s struggle to find harmony in a chaotic life where “nothing fits.” For story-lovers, “King Park” is by far the most powerful songs of the album and tells a tale of a death at a crime scene. The authentic sadness of the stories told don’t fade even after a few listens.

I predict more good things to come from La Dispute and similar post-hardcore bands. La Dispute’s second full-length feels like many years’ experience and maturity — both musically and in life. La Dispute is currently on tour with Thrice, Moving Mountains and O’Brother until next month.