Album: Rooms Of The House
Release: 18.3.2014
Label: Better Living
Tracklist:
1 Hudsonville MI 1956
2 First Reactions After Falling Through The Ice
3 Woman (In Mirror)
4 Scenes From Highways 1981-2009
5 For Mayor In Splitsville
6 35
7 Stay Happy There
8 The Child We Lost 1963
9 Woman (Reading)
10 Extraordinary Dinner Party
11 Objects In Space
It has been a while. No almost a decade I have posted a review. There has been a lot of really interesting records and it has been really hard find the right one to review. But now I have found one that everyone should listen to even once!
La Dispute is a band I have never really understood. Their debut album Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair is said to be one of 2008s best post-hardcore albums with its unique sound and playfulness. I never understood the whole concept.
But now it is year 2014. The band has travelled a long way in 6 years and you can hear it in this album. Rooms of the House is something totally different. The band has dropped a lot of the experimental phases they had in the earlier records and created a firm sound that continues through out the record. You can hear the influences from bands like Thursday and Glassjaw with the atmospheric guitar sounds and bashing hardcore elements.
The lyrics on the album gives me a really big resemblance to the work of Defeater with the concept albums about a working class family in the Post-World War II Era.
Rooms of the House tells the captivating story of a couples breaking up and the struggles that go throughout the process. In this context, the vocals of Jordan Dreyer are used in the right way. Dreyer combines the spoken word and almost desperate screaming to the captivating lyrics in almost a harmonical way.
In songs like "For Mayor In Splitsville" where Jordan screams in frustration the lines Maybe I'm miserable, I'd rather run for mayor in Splitsville than suffer your jokes again." you can only think if he has suffered the situation himself. Or at the ending of "Woman (Reading)" when Dreyer speaks the last lines almost whispering " And I live alone now. Save for the echoes" it leaves a little pain in your heart.
This is a record that literally blew my mind. The concept of the album and the growing of the band as a group is captivating and makes you understand how well they have gathered information and knowledge for this record. The pain of the realization of a ending relationship is so well captured in the record that you cannot do anything else than raise hat to Jordan Dreyer for the text he has written. And when you are sitting in the dark corner of your room when the record is ending and Dreyer speaks the last line " And I put them in boxes" you find a slight hope but sadness in your heart that makes you want to listen to the album once again and feel the struggles of the woman in the mirror and the mayor of Splitsville. You want to get lost in the Rooms of the House once more.
5/5
-Niklas Aaltio
Spotify: La Dispute – Rooms of the House
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaDisputeMusic?fref=ts
Website: http://www.ladisputemusic.com
Buy the record: http://www.levykauppax.fi/artist/la_dispute/rooms_of_the_house/#cd
