LogFAQs > #967948222

1. Woman (reading)
2. Stay Happy There
3. Woman (in mirror)
4. The Child We Lost 1963
5. Hudsonville, MI 1956
6. Objects in Space
7. Scenes from Highways 1981-2009
8. Extraordinary Dinner Party
9. First Reactions After Falling Through the Ice
10. 35
11. For Mayor in Splitsville

This album absolutely wrecks me every listen. It's an album that manages to feel raw and off-the-cuff, like someone writing in a journal about their disparate memories decades after the fact, recollecting trauma and emotion in a euphoric manner, yet make no mistake, every note and strained lyric is exactly where it's meant to be, as La Dispute weaves together an impressive narrative of widespread tragedy, personal heartbreak, and the mundanities of daily life that keep the world spinning. Much like the events portrayed in the album, La Dispute bounces between the soft sounds of a daydream memory and the death-curdling racket of nightmarish pain, such as the case with the punctuated drums and delicate words of Dreyer on "Woman (reading)" giving way to an outpouring of recollection, with the same instrumentals there now more distorted and scratched as if Dreyer's memories were twisted and corrupted in some way. I use this example because I think that track captures this album's tones and messages perfectly. It's a centerpiece that perfectly captures those slow days that always meant the most to you but can never get back. Tiny dots on an endless timeline.

The album opens with "Hudsonville, MI 1956", a track that unfolds like a lurid horror novel. It depicts a recently married husband and wife taking separate trips as a tornado tears through the titular town. Dreyer's lyrics are what nightmares are made of, chock full of intense detail, veering wildly from mundane distractions like building a bookshelf to the grotesquery a woman and her unborn child being thrown into a barbed wire fence. The punctuated vocals, guitars and drums become increasingly more choppy and broken up, the desperation increasing, ands the lyrics have a double effect of signaling the very collapse of the husband and wife's union and fading passion which then unfolds out in the rest of the album's winding and spiraling narrative. The album rewards close attention as every track here calls back or forward to another in some way. There are album tracks here that are actually fully capped (HUDSONVILLE, HIGHWAYS, & CHILD) to signal where they take place which is just such a cool detail, but it's also important because this storyline runs parallel to Dreyer's own experiences with the same thing - as history repeats itself in the worst of ways. Instead of a tornado, it's a bridge collapse, and much like Dreyer's own family history he experiences the same strife and separation. Dreyer's personal tracks often tend to highlight real life as the tragedies take place in the background, such as the absolutely amazing "Stay Happy There", a near unstoppable hardcore onslaught that feels like the most terrifying argument your parents never had as details such as scouring a kitchen for a knife or coffee boiling on the stove feel as huge to an individual as a bridge collapse causing pain and horror to countless individuals. It might feel in bad taste to say that anywhere else, but the way the guitars and Dreyer screams everything out makes you believe it too.

Rooms of the House has moved me to tears and has made me rethink life in ways I never thought possible, and has been a constant present in my life ever since I heard back in 2016. Honestly my favorite track can be something different every time. Like, I think "The Child We Lost 1963" is the most lyrically proficient song on the whole album, but it's so fucking hard to listen to sometimes that I just gravitate towards other tracks sometimes. Or "Objects in Space", a spoken word entry that caps off the album, an epilogue to everything that's at once an emotional goodbye to a past life and a fresh step towards something better. Retroactively, I actually compare this album to The Caretaker's Everywhere at the End of Time. Though about different subjects, that ebb and flow of memories being lost to the void feels so apt to Rooms of the House, the subdued and contorted sounds combining into one for a whole experience unlike any other.