Album Review: La Dispute — Rooms of the House

La Dispute are releasing their third full-length album , Rooms of the House. I was first introduced to them through their album Wildlife and then I had the chance to see them play live with The Menzingers. It took me a while to really get into them. Initially, I found some of the lyrics hard to understand and really had to listen closely to figure it out — it wasn’t ideal background or studying music for me. However, with this album, I find myself enjoying it more and it’s easier to listen to.

The album kicks off with “HUDSONVILLE MI 1956" and it immediately grabs your attention. You can hear the emotion in the singers voice throughout and how it fluctuates with certain lines in the song. That stays the same throughout the whole album as well. This first track is the start of a story that runs the entirety of the album. Even just by looking at the song titles, you can see they aim to tell a full story. The story starts with a couple living together and how their relationship starts to tailspin and it leads up to the aftermath of the events as you can hear in “THE CHILD WE LOST 1963.” Adding the dates to the songs makes it easier to put into perspective for the listener when and where this story takes place.

Compared to their first two albums, this one is also different musically. Rather than using the same heavy influences, they’ve traded some of those in for more melodic ones. This was definitely a risk for the band to tweak their sound, but I believe it paid off. I’m not saying the band had a “sophomore slump” by any means, but this album is their best work thus far. Some of the notable songs on the album are “HUDSONVILLE MI 1956,” “Stay Happy There,” and “THE CHILD WE LOST 1963."

Between Dreyer’s lyrics and the musicianship of the rest of the band, they have released a great piece of art that tops any previous work they have done. I look forward to seeing how they plan to top this in the future. All it took for me to get into this album was one listen — a huge improvement from the first two.