La Dispute – Somewhere At The Bottom of The River Between Vega and Altair

  • Bobby Gorman posted
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La Dispute

Somewhere At The Bottom of The River Between Vega and Altair - No Sleep Records

Often when I get a new batch of CDs that I haven’t heard off before I’ll just throw them in my CD player randomly. When one CD ends, the other begins and once I’ve listened to all three in my player I start all over again. Sometimes it’s hard to get through all three records in my player, at times its because the CD is so bad I can’t listen to it all the way through; but often it’s for a different reason. Instead, a CD will just jump out at me and beg to be played over and over again.

When Such Small Hands, the opening track of La Dispute‘s Somewhere At The Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair, came on I knew it was the time for the later.

While only a minute and a half long, Such Small Hands instantly stops you in your place. The simple beat that grows and expands may grab your ears but it is the vocals that really steal the show. Delivered with a sense of reserved passion and emotion, the vocals are intense and sincere and unlike anything else I’ve heard in a long, long time. The song ends with a thundering drum beat that carries forward to the following track and right away you know you’re in for one hell of a ride.

The record is an emotional roller coaster ride of post-hardcore music that foams with intensity and ferocity. Musically you get a massive sound that remains restrained at all times. It’s chaotic and spastic yet controlled enough to get your blood pumping at a steady beat. It’s perfectly mixed and engineered to equally divide all the necessary components of the song. The massive riffs, the thump of the bass, the squeal of the guitar, the clapping hands and some hugely thunderous drum beats work together to create a sound that bubbles with excitement and energy. It’s a post hardcore sound that ebbs and flows between sonic blasts and reserved melodies; somewhat similar to The Photo Atlas or At The Drive-In.

Still, the real gem of La Dispute‘s sound and the glue that holds them together is the vocals. Delivered at a speed and tone that falls between speaking and singing, Jordan Dreyer makes the listener want to sing and scream the lyrics back at him. There’s a disheveled passion in the delivery, a sensation of a person at the end of his rope, unsure of what to do or where to go. It’s a stream of conscious delivery as Dreyer just spills out thoughts and opinions without an instant of hesitation or the use of any sort of chorus. Lyrically he deliverers just as well. Stories from a madman’s head of love, lost, despair, questioning, anger, passion, and wonderment. There’s depth and ambiguity in there, ensuring that whoever hears them hears a different story.

Somewhere At The Bottom of The River Between Vega and Altair is an unique album that remains cohesive despite mass experimentation and is, at the end of the day, just a damn good album that begs to be played over and over and over again.