La Dispute - Rooms of the House

La Dispute
Rooms of the House
18 March 2014
Better Living

4.5 stars out of 5

 

Grand Rapids, Michigan’s post-hardcore combo La Dispute’s third LP, Rooms of the House, is a concept album centered on the contents—photos and other artifacts—that lead vocalist Jordan Dreyer—or a character played by him—finds in a(n abandoned?) house. Musically, the album is a hybrid of Tortoise-like math rock grooves and At the Drive-in-style post-hardcore energy, mood, and textures. The listener is immersed in a nostalgic world of car accidents and snow storms through Dreyer’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics. The album is presented in what seem to be three chapters: “HUDSONVILLE MI 1956,” “SCENES FROM HIGHWAYS 1981-2009,” and “THE CHILD WE LOST 1963,” each chapter introduced by a song of the same title.

“First Reactions After Falling Through the Ice” is an impressionist retelling of a near drowning, presented in disjointed frames cut from a frantic home movie. “Woman (In Mirror)” sees the band taking a break from post-hardcore intensity and settling into a groove reminiscent of The War on Drugs (see Friday’s review). On “SCENES FROM…” Dreyer sings, “I think history’s a system of roads and there’s nowhere it doesn’t go.” The lyric reveals a lot about his ideas of storytelling and about the concepts he’s manipulating within the scope of this album. “35” describes the collapsing of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge during the Minneapolis evening rush hour of 1 August 2007, and the struggles of the drivers and passengers to free themselves from their vehicles as they fill up with water and sink into the unforgiving river. Did Dreyer witness the collapse first-hand as his lyrics would suggest, or is he placing himself at the scene to better understand the character he may or may not be playing?

Rooms of the House closes with “Objects in Space,” a description of Dreyer’s surroundings—objects, artifacts, photographs—as he finishes writing the album and packs everything away. While there may be a few red flags raised when one reads “post-hardcore concept album” and “At the Drive-in” in the same review, rest assured that the pretentiousness is kept to a minimum here. Dreyer is at times a sound-alike for Cedric Bixler, but La Dispute leans far more towards the math rock end of the spectrum (think Slint deciding to rock out) than the prog rock end. Highly recommended.

reviewed by Richard Krueger