Dash

It’s my 4th time seeing La Dispute (King Tut’s in 2012, and then 2023 and 2024 for the Wildlife and Rooms Of The House album anniversary tours respectively), so there’s a sense of familiarity in seeing Jordan Dreyer’s frantic delivery in a now more eclectic outfit - Paris Review hat, red necktie, some sort of very comfortable vest that he was battling with taking off for a couple songs - around his more sedate stoic peers. He seemed brighter and more cheerful, which made sense when he told us all that this was the first gig of the tour (I hadn’t clocked this). It’s not the best I’ve seen them - there was some rust being shaken off and some guitar sounds to work out in the mix for me, Jordan professed his voice being a bit shaky and on edge of going - but it’s just always a beautiful soundscape full of moments you remember forever.

I love La Dispute dearly, I really do. They make it onto the imagined Mount Rushmore of bands that have shaped how I listen to music, every album has a specific tangible connection to a formative memory, I have a tattoo based around the ability to find hope in the bleakest places based on the song Safer in the Forest/Love Song for Poor Michigan, discovering and sharing them is at the heart of many of my most meaningful friendships. So what happens at La Dispute shows, the music they release, the feelings they express, end up meaning more than most shows I go to. So I thought I’d write about a few moments that stuck with me.

Jordan has, in all recent shows, given a heartfelt and often rambly speech - in the style of an unsure job interviewee who has forgotten the question but perseveres nonetheless, a state we can all empathise with - on the community we build from these shows, and how it is important to resist “hate”. He uses it as a chance to talk explicitly about the standards we must maintain in our “punk rock or whatever this is” community, behaviours we shouldn’t tolerate. He’s always been very explicit about naming the trans community as a specific group to love and support, something that draws me closer to trusting him every time.

This year it seemed to go further. Food Not Bombs were invited to have a stall near the merch. He rails against profit for what I think is the first time. He encourages us to fight fascism. He ends by telling us Free Palestine, to cheers and (bafflingly and completely incongruous with the mood) a “Here We Fucking Go” chant from the crowd.

I mention the crowd here, as truly I do feel more and more disconnected from it. None more so than during King Park, La Dispute’s biggest song and crowd favourite that I struggle to watch now. The context of King Park is important - it is the song almost everyone there knows every word to, a gripping tense song following anger, sadness, despair of “observing” gun violence, a young kid wracked with guilt from shooting another kid, screaming from his perspective “can I still get into heaven if I kill myself” with a discordant guitar slamming a repeated octave over rhythmic stabs. There isn’t a song I know that feels as uniquely uncomfortable and broken as that song manages in marrying its lyrical content to hardcore instrumentation. In that context, there is no better word than jarring to see a band perform with tense solemnity, sombrely utter - “I want to be there when the bullet hits” - to a break filled with whooping and someone crowdsurfing with a selfie video running. The song is one of mourning, one which I can’t disconnect from police violence and the related libration struggles in its context, and the bizarre juxtaposition of a seemingly affluent Glasgow crowd screaming in joy; I guess I don’t know what I want? Cathartic screaming of lyrics is all we have while being a part of these moments, but perhaps the crowd surfing broke the connection for me in a way that feels difficult to repair. It made me wonder to what degree a crowd processes what they sing. Perhaps they don’t need to, but I wonder how it makes the writer feel.

I have to emphasise here, there was a lot of very cool things about the crowd - a lot more young people (16-25??) than I would have expected, many queer symbols, “diverse”. Perhaps the first hardcore show with a woman wearing a hijab that id been to. My criticisms re: King Park, and actions that just felt jarring or incongruous to the mood of some song(s), are directed at a different venn diagram really. Perhaps it’s simply old man yelling at a cloud. Maybe it isn’t important at all, just to my idyllic view of what a band could mean maybe.

Still, I had a lovely time. Here are a few songs that stuck out to me:

• Andria: I am so glad it’s stuck in their set list from their Rooms Of The House anniversary tour (where this was an encore song). It’s a beautiful song about loss and breakup, and a pace of song they don’t really write that much any more for me. It’s a sentiment I’ve carried close to the heart - “If I do not miss a part of you a part of me is dead”

• Woman (Reading): Coincidentally the first song I was taught on drums, and a song that stuck with me for years after heartbreak, where you see the echoes of someone still being in your home. I liken it sometimes to imagining the key turning, or the footsteps of a pet after they’ve passed, the ghosts you’re left with. Lovely guitar work, and a love song at the heart of it all.

• Autofiction Detail: The song from the new album that’s stuck with me the most, and probably the live performance that stuck with everyone also. Starting with a dissonant bass groove that sets the foundation through most of the song, you work your way through a maelstrom of solos and chaos until brough to appreciate a stillness. “_a beating heart, a beating heart, a beating heart, a beating heart”. _ Probably the most serene, memorable part of the show. Ultimately the moment that will stick with me the most.