La Dispute has always thrived on tension between spoken-word intimacy and chaotic eruption, between poetry and raw noise. On their new album No One Was Driving the Car, named after a fatal Tesla crash, the Michigan post-hardcore veterans channel that tension into a scathing meditation on greed, corruption, and the unsettling pace of technological change.

From the outset, the record feels haunted by absence of accountability, of morality, of someone “behind the wheel.” Jordan Dreyer’s vocal delivery, part confession and part accusation, pushes every line with urgency, his voice cracking like a wound that refuses to close. The band’s instrumentation mirrors that instability: guitars spiral into intricate webs, drums crash unpredictably, and moments of quiet reflection suddenly lurch into cacophony. This volatility is La Dispute at their best, using sound itself to embody unease.

Lyrically, the album grapples with a society run on profit at the expense of human lives. The imagery of driverless cars and technological detachment becomes a metaphor for political negligence and corporate greed. Yet amidst the rage, there are moments of vulnerability admissions of fear, of exhaustion, of living in a world where the ground feels increasingly unstable.

What makes No One Was Driving the Car compelling is not only its critique but its ambition. Rather than retreating into genre tropes, La Dispute stretches the boundaries of post-hardcore, weaving spoken passages, atmospheric interludes, and explosive breakdowns into a cohesive, urgent narrative. Fourteen years after their breakout, they remain unflinchingly relevant, their music carrying the weight of lived anger and restless conscience.

In the end, the album is both a protest and a plea: a furious rejection of complacency and a desperate call to reassert human responsibility in a world that feels automated, detached, and dangerously adrift.