Review Summary: Our hearts still beat the same.
I despise this album.
I hate how much I can relate. I hate the shakiness contained in each decibel of Dreyer's voice. I hate how whiney it all is. And most of all, I hate how much I enjoy everything about it. It should turn me off; I shouldn't listen to this emotionally unstable singer pour his heart out to me. Why should I? I'm not him. I can take whatever life throws at me. I don't need something to lean onto. I don't need to hear his etched screams of heartbreak and see that he understands too.
Yet, I do.
A couple years ago, it just wasn't me. I listened and just couldn't comprehend why this guy felt the need to show the entire world what no man should: his deepest emotion, his deepest feelings. Afterall, I was a senior in high school, had a great relationship of two years, and I was generally well liked. There wasn't any reason for me to feel unstable. In fact, never had I felt unstable. And I couldn't understand why this singer just couldn't
get over it. Man, things change though.
Now I hear his voice break and understand. I can connect, I feel his anguish when he says
stitching up the seams on every broken promise that your body couldn't keep as I think back to when I found out my girlfriend cheated on me with my best friend. I know this anger; I get the despair. I hear every pain delivered through a tone of voice that no one should speak; or know what it means. I see more clearly now. I listen to ''Andria" and connect to everything. How much he misses her, even for what she did. How they tried to stay together, but always ran back to their mistakes. It's through these lyrics that I understand the way I could have never before, the hatred of seeing something that reminds you of that pain when he says
I've hated airports ever since.
And that's just it. In order to fully achieve what this album has to say, at least for me, you have to go through something similar. You have to have fully loved someone. You have to have gone through the anger of deception. Then the pain of realizing that all of your plans for future are for not. All of it's a tough pill to swallow. And something like this album cannot be accomplished just by a lead singer. It can only be accomplished by all of the units playing together as one. And that is featured here as well, as prominently as Dreyer's lyrics and tone. Whether it's the clean, finger picked riff on ''Last Blues for Bloody Knuckles" creating a very somber feel, or when another clean picked section transfers perfectly into a crushing riff as Dreyer screams only to go back clean section again just as quickly on "The Last Lost Continent." If anyone says this album is solely Jonathan Dreyers show, they are very wrong. Everyone in the band is showcased; everyone is trying to scream the same message. Whether through beautiful riffs or upbeat drums and fills that come at all the right moments it's clear that this is true.
There is a reason I hate this album so much, but it's much different than the one I previously had those years ago. I hate having to have gone through two years of a great relationship and another year trying to find where it all went. It's something that no one should go through; emotions no one should ever feel. But it's clear that many have, and La Dispute being one of them. They emit everything perfectly. All the troubles of it, all the horrid images, everything shown here with great vision. And that's the reason why I hate this album, because I can connect on an emotional level the way no other album has ever reached me.
I just wish that I couldn't.
