LogFAQs > #968120134

La Dispute - Rooms of the House results

The participants sorted by deviation from final results:
Snake5555555555 (14)
Johnbobb (16)
FoolFantastic (18)
Raetsel_Lapin (27)
MetalmindStats (31)
Seanchan (35)
HBJDubs (38)

General Album Comments

Snake5555555555: 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.

Seanchan: Did a first listen and I feel like this is a repeat of last week, just with more traditional rock rather than metal. Once again, I failed to find much in the instrumentation and found the vocals to be not good. It was just a lot of yell-y/scream-y vocals with some seemingly random rock beats. Again, I just felt a disconnect between the vocals and the instrumentation. This is 10+ minutes shorter than last week's album but you could have fooled me with how interminable it felt.

Okay, now let me try to walk it back some.

I will of course be giving this another few listens this week. And I will try to pay more attention to the lyrics. I listened to this on an afternoon walk and that's not particularly conducive to absorbing/appreciating lyrics, especially for me with a new album. I think I find more enjoyment in how singing melds with the instruments (maybe some of the reason I enjoyed Roses so much with the French lyrics). An album that's so lyric and story focused is a tough sell for me and there was certainly points where my brain went all Charlie Brown's teacher ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss2hULhXf04 ). All that said, I kind of enjoyed the last song a bit.

Snake5555555555: Perfectly okay! I hope the album grows on you once you pay more attention to the lyrics. Jordan Dreyer, the vocalist and main lyricist, would probably agree that he's not the best singer in the world, as his background is mainly in poetry and literature.

Steiner: might not be able to rank, we'll see how busy i am at the weekend, but from early listening i love this

Seanchan: Sorry, this one's only getting two listens this week. I did sit down and pay more attention to the lyrics, which really revealed the absolute DENSITY of this album lyrically. Like, there's hardly any choruses at all, which is just tough for me because there's nothing to latch onto. So many of the songs just start and it's a 3.5-4.5 minute barrage of story, which would be fine except I find the singing to be kind of atrocious, especially when he got into that yell/scream range. I also did pick up on some of that interweaving of lyrics/themes/whatever between some of the songs.

Woman (in mirror) was a fairly easy choice as #1. It didn't grate on me, had a nice little beat, and I did enjoy that lyric "tiny dots on an endless timeline". I already mentioned how a kind of liked Objects in Space on my first listen and that remained the case, despite it being spoken word rather than singing. The middle songs had some good lyrics or poignancy. The ones at the bottom had too much yell/scream for my tastes at were kind of hard to get through.

Just to be clear, I'm not a fan of this. I'm glad to have given it a shot but I cannot envision myself ever listening to this again.

MetalmindStats: This album feels sort of personal to me in totally different ways than it must have been to its makers, which I reckon is only fitting.