Album Review: La Dispute - Wildlife

“Tell me what your worst fears are. I bet they look a lot like mine”, Jordan Dreyer pines on penultimate track ‘All Our Bruised Bodies and the Whole Heart Shrinks’. And really, this one statement does as good a job as any ever could of encapsulating the whole heart of Wildlife – a staggeringly bold album that guides whoever it touches through a vivid and visceral exploration of humanity.

Where their previous LP 'Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair' was concerned with the turmoil’s of a relationship, 'Wildlife' is concerned with all-encompassing social struggles, though still retains the same sense of personal grief that has permeated all of La Dispute’s releases to date. The consistence and intensity of raw emotion showcased on 'Somewhere at the Bottom...' caused many to critique it for feeling melodramatic to the point of absurdity, so much so that the album warranted its own drinking game, which involves taking a shot for every ‘darling’ and ‘lover’ (better known as a one-way ticket to melancholy en-masse and/or the emergency room for anyone who makes it past ‘Said the King to the River’).

Though Jordan Dreyer’s brutally blunt and candid lyrical style can sometimes be perceived as sickly in the context of heartbreak, it proves to be Wildlife’s greatest strength. His erratic transitions between pit-of-the-stomach screaming, gentle spoken word, and threadbare desperation drag you simultaneously into and through two worlds: one of urban turmoil and one of Dreyer’s own existential crisis. Whether he is emptying his lungs or drawing breath, his lyrics and vocal delivery combined open up a portal for two-way emotional traffic to flow – let’s face it, he is possibly the only frontman who could make the words “January 19...” so poignant and stomach-knotting –but the bridge isn’t built by this alone. At The Drive-In style scathing guitars, overcast melodies, fidgety drumming, and acutely sensitive percussion assemble landscapes for Dreyer’s terrifying tales to play out across. Like a film and its soundtrack, each element serves to enhance the other, and this relationship is what transformed 'Somewhere at the Bottom...' from the reading of a broken-hearted teenager’s diary to witnessing a live performance of open heart surgery, and the same is true of 'Wildlife.'

Fundamentally, the content on both 'Wildlife' and 'Somewhere at the Bottom...' stems from the same fears and anxieties; both detail the breakdown of something whether it’s of a relationship, an individual, or an entire society. However, 'Wildlife' has a markedly wider scope. It plays through as though you were flicking through a newspaper and picking out a selection of the most horrifying headlines. Mental illness, cancer, unemployment, murder – each track tells a new tragedy, and Dreyer presents them to us as if he has his face pressed up against the glass, narrating in such intimate detail that you are pulled into the middle of the scene. As decidedly bleak as that may sound, there is never a point where the despondency of the album becomes exclusively morbid. There is a tangible sense of catharsis to 'Wildlife'; that the songs have been written not for the sake of it, but because they needed to be. The same can be said of Somewhere at the Bottom..., but where that album made a fist around heartbreak and wrung it bone-dry, there is not a moment of over-indulgence on 'Wildlife'. Perhaps it’s because heartbreak is a more accessible topic in many ways, not that that makes it an easy thing to write about it well, but writing about a family losing their youngest child to cancer, and writing about it well, is a whole other ballgame.

Having resigned post-darlingcore to 2008, Dreyer’s troubled monologues accompanied by dynamic musicianship tell the stories so vividly, and with such genuine feeling and empathy, that you inevitably invest in them yourself. From the terrifying narrative of ‘King Park’ where Dreyer places himself in the shoes of a gunman post drive-by shooting gone wrong shrieking “Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?” to the fictional journal entries of ‘I See Everything’ detailing a young boy’s losing battle with cancer, each narrative dives deep into itself to hunt for an explanation or a meaning; each narrative is an exploration of fear, faith, love, death, and the narrator’s pursuit to understand them all. We get a more comprehensive view of this where the third person perspective of the album is punctuated by tracks presented in the form of letters – ‘a Departure’, ‘a Letter’, ‘a Poem’ and ‘a Broken Jar’ – staggered perfectly throughout and drawing strongly on elements from the primarily spoken-word experimentation of the 'Here, Hear' EP’s. During these interludes we witness Dreyer turning himself inside out, revealing his fears all too honestly but this time striking a much deeper chord than the ubiquitous one of heartache. There are innumerable moments within these tracks that could be pulled out as significant, but there is a particularly uncomfortable and harrowing moment at the end of ‘a Poem where Dreyer speaks quietly, almost whispering: “The worst of the wildlife wears clothes and can pray and/ The worry, the wonder, for three meals a day/ Only death unimpeded, not slowing it’s pace/ Brings that petty, old worry and wonder away.” The sadness of these words almost melts into the opening of ‘King Park’, snowballing into fury as the vocals kick in once again.

Similar to releases such as Brand New's 'The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me' and mewithoutYou's 'Brother, Sister,' there is a remarkable balance between absolute pain, rage, and beauty that comes together to create an album so disturbing and moving in equal measure. Like those albums, 'Wildlife' seems to reach some sort of conclusion, but its concerns are never dispelled. After spending thirteen songs anguishing over the injustice of senseless tragedy and death, 'Wildlife' ultimately finds its sense of resolution in ‘You and I in Unison’. As with ‘The Last Lost Continent’, Dreyer once again turns to human strength and harmony as a comfort blanket – “In all those giving up/ In all those giving in/ Until I die I will sing our names in unison.” Through his unique “big heart on a little sleeve” poeticism, Jordan Dreyer has always sought light in the darkest of places, with his stories hosting a passionate struggle between the two, but the comfort that so many find in his lyrics tends to come from a sense of uncertainty rather than steadfastness. Both 'Somewhere at the Bottom...' and 'Wildlife' are riddled with question marks, maybe’s, and I-don’t-know’s that together form a home for the lost. La Dispute’s music is about seeking answers, not offering them, but there is something to be said for vocalizing the questions that most people only ask themselves. There is a common ground to be found in the types of questions put forward on 'Wildlife' – its narratives of faith and death both reduce us to and separate us from animals (the former by some of our actions, the latter by the sadness, empathy, and belief that is collectively felt in moments of obscurity). In that sense, the lost remain lost, but they are not alone, and that is certainly a sentiment evoked on the concluding track - “No one should ever have to walk through the fire alone/ No one should ever have to brave that storm/ No. Everybody needs someone or something.”

4.5/5

'Wildlife' is out now on No Sleep Records.

Emma Garland