La Dispute returns after six years with new album – first three tracks released

American post-hardcore band La Dispute has announced their long-awaited new album, titled “No One Was Driving The Car”. It’s set for release on September 5th via Epitaph Records.

The title was inspired by a news article read by vocalist Jordan Dreyer, and according to the band’s press release, the album explores themes of “melancholy in the shadow of a looming apocalypse.”

And they’re not wasting any time: instead of dropping just one single, La Dispute has shared the first three tracks from the record — “I Shaved My Head”, “Man With Hands And Ankles Bound”, and “Autofiction Detail”.

Dreyer explains that “I Shaved My Head” follows a man who, late at night, shaves his head while reflecting on how he’s slowly become estranged from himself. The second song, “Man With Hands And Ankles Bound”, shifts perspective to a scene glimpsed through a neighbor’s window: a man lies bound in a room while a woman — possibly a sex worker — stands in front of him. When she leaves, the man is left alone, and the narrator follows — not necessarily after the woman herself, but after the idea of her, and what she represents: a longing for a life lost to time, self-doubt, and circumstance.

The third track, “Autofiction Detail”, trails the narrator through a restless night among the outcast and disconnected, until he ends up somewhere he was unconsciously headed all along — the hospital where his partner works. There, something internal shifts: a confrontation, a reckoning, a moment of awakening.

1. I Shaved My Head
2. Man With Hands And Ankles Bound
3. Autofiction Detail
4. Environmental Catastrophe Film
5. Self-Portrait Backwards
6. The Field
7. Sibling Fistfight At Mom’s Fiftieth / The Un-sound
8. Landlord Calls The Sheriff In
9. Steve
10. Top-Sellers Banquet
11. Saturation Diver
12. I Dreamt Of A Room With All My Friends
13. No One Was Driving The Car
14. End Times Sermon