No One Was Driving The Car, So Take Solace in Powerlessness

Graphic by Téa Sklar

I identify as an eclectic music listener. I’m reminded of this fact every time my main playlist jumps from jaunty synthpop to unrepentingly nihilistic black metal. 

I’m pretentious, I’m well aware: an existence made apparent by my preferred streaming platforms (Bandcamp and Tidal). I could probably benefit from categorizing my music by moods. 

When it comes to my absolute favorites, there are at least a few shared characteristics: diverse, emotionally earnest and well produced. Going down my list of favorites, each artist checks multiple of these boxes.

La Dispute fits right at home along this gaggle of misfits. They would’ve made it much earlier if they had released an album earlier, with this newest record being their first in six years. 

Their 2008 debut, Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair , established them. From album one, the group showcased everything they would be recognized and cherished for: their free-flowing song structures, phenomenal bass grooves and punishing guitar textures. 

Their debut still feels like a product of the late-aughts post-hardcore/screamo scene, where the limited, somewhat typical sonic palette is less a dealbreaker and more a product of their youth as an act.

Those gripes, however, do not carry over to 2011’s “Wildlife”, one of the greatest records of the entire decade. While the album’s greatest moments come in absolute heavy, the album never feels preachy or overbearing. 

The purpose of this nearly 700 word ramble was to help you comprehend the weight of the following statement: No One Was Driving the Car might be the best La Dispute album to date.

This project strikes a phenomenal balance between appeasing both the hardcore audience who wanted a return to their heavier days and the art-school hipsters who appreciated the more methodical, spacious production. 

For those wishing La Dispute returned to more immediate heaviness, then act one is your holy grail. I adore how “I Shaved My Head” slowly introduces new elements into the mix as the track ramps up, the most prominent being the absolutely pulse-pounding bass riff . 

However the true standouts are “Environmental Catastrophe Film” and “Top-Sellers Banquet”: two eight-minute multi-part behemoths of tracks which both manage to  create a cinematic scale without feeling overwrought or dragging. In my opinion, this makes front-to-back listens even more engaging without compromising the power of individual tracks, as each listen reveals new depths to the songwriting and emotional nuance. 

Like most La Dispute albums, the lyrical content is what truly carries this project to absolute transcendence. Thematically, No One Was Driving the Car is a culmination of ideas found across La Dispute’s catalog. This album critiques the band’s own tendencies of creating narrators who aren’t active participants in their own stories by showing the danger of letting life pass by without making any choices yourself.

This framing is essential for the album’s central theme: the inevitability of time and the extent to which we can control how it's spent. Across the album’s runlength, you get snapshots of a life spent dormant, restless and unfulfilled. 

Unfortunately, La Dispute are acutely aware that we cannot always control our own destinies. The album’s narrator is paralyzed into inaction by the weight of past traumas, which are recounted across “Steve”, “The Fields”, and “Environmental Catastrophe Film.” 

If you think that’s too much to process emotionally in just one sitting, you’d be right. There’s a reason why this album is broken into  five distinct movements.. Each track builds on itself with flickers of memory, allowing the more detached observations to gain grounded emotional heft. The album perfectly captures an intimate scale with internal and intrapersonal conflicts while also addressing the systemic factors that only compound your own struggles.

No One Was Driving the Car might not be the most perfect album of 2025, but it is the most ME album of 2025 – written for me, about me, with music made for me and built to hurt me.It carries realizations and emotional beats I will cherish for my entire life, and is an absolute triumph of music as a medium.