La Dispute No One Was Driving The Car
La Dispute's No One Was Driving The Car arrives as a bruising, vividly observed record that channels industrial decline and technological anxiety into tightly wound, guitar-driven storytelling. Critics praise the album's balancing act between widescreen fury and intimate confession, and its best songs - notably “I Shaved My Head”, “Environmental Catastrophe Film” and “Man with Hands and Ankles Bound” - repeatedly surface as the emotional and sonic high points.
Across five professional reviews the record earned an 82/100 consensus score, with reviewers consistently citing the ten-minute centerpiece “Environmental Catastrophe Film” as the album's moral axis and “I Shaved My Head” as an immediate, wrenching opener. Critics agree the band tightens jagged post-hardcore riffs around Dreyer's claustrophobic, memory-rich narration, using domestic detail and religious allegory to map despair, greed and ecological decay. Songs like “Saturation Diver” and “Self-Portrait Backwards” are singled out for their quieter, nearly tender moments that offset the record's political tragedy and sense of community dislocation.
While most reviews celebrate the album's compositional ambition and emotional intensity, a measured strain of reservation appears in comments about its length and relentless bleakness. The critical consensus suggests No One Was Driving The Car stands as a vital, if often harrowing, chapter in La Dispute's catalog - a work where standout tracks deliver both immediate impact and gradual, cumulative force, making the collection worth close listening for those seeking the band's most morally incandescent songs yet.
Critics' Top Tracks
The standout songs that made critics take notice
Environmental Catastrophe Film
4 mentions
"through to the lilting, tense spiral of 'Environmental Catastrophe Film'"— DIY Magazine
I Shaved My Head
5 mentions
"From the stark opening gambit of 'I Shaved My Head', in all its sparse, intense glory"— DIY Magazine
Man with Hands and Ankles Bound
5 mentions
"there’s a more primal rawness this time around (whether in the heavy sense, as in 'Man With Hands and Ankles Bound'"— DIY Magazine
through to the lilting, tense spiral of 'Environmental Catastrophe Film'
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
I Shaved My Head
Man with Hands and Ankles Bound
Autofiction Detail
Environmental Catastrophe Film
Self-Portrait Backwards
The Field
Sibling Fistfight at Mom's Fiftieth / The Un-sound
Landlord Calls the Sheriff In
Steve
Top-Sellers Banquet
Saturation Diver
I Dreamt of a Room with All My Friends I Could Not Get In
No One Was Driving The Car
End Times Sermon
What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 5 critics who reviewed this album
Critic's Take
In this review, La Dispute's No One Was Driving The Car finds its best songs in the spacious, moral reckonings like “Environmental Catastrophe Film” and the intimate plea of “Self-Portrait Backwards”. The reviewer latches onto the nearly nine-minute centerpiece - a track that traces Grand Rapids' faded industry through a single chair - as the album's emotional fulcrum, and highlights the gentle strumming on “Self-Portrait Backwards” and “Saturation Diver” as crucial moments where Dreyer's desperation becomes almost tender. Written in the same observant, slightly sardonic tone as the review, this account names those songs as the best tracks on No One Was Driving The Car because they combine La Dispute's moral fury with compositional ambition. The narrative keeps the reviewer’s measured anger and descriptive clarity while answering what the best songs on the album are.
Key Points
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The best song is "Environmental Catastrophe Film" because it functions as the album's emotional and thematic centerpiece.
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The album's core strengths are its moral imagination, ambitious composition, and Dreyer's anguished vocals combining personal pain with political critique.
Themes
Critic's Take
In Kyle Kohner’s urgent voice, La Dispute return with No One Was Driving The Car, a record that finds its best songs in inward spectacle and widescreen fury. He singles out “I Shaved My Head" and “Man With Hands and Ankles Bound” as immediate, wrenching moments, and crowns “Environmental Catastrophe Film” the album’s spiritual axis with its ten-minute leviathan of grief. Kohner’s sentences tighten and release like the record itself — precise, cinematic, piled with domestic detail — making clear why listeners ask which are the best tracks on No One Was Driving The Car. The review reads like a warning and a benediction: these standout songs make the album feel necessary, loud, and morally incandescent.
Key Points
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The best song is "Environmental Catastrophe Film" for its cinematic scale and emotional centrality.
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The album’s core strengths are cinematic ambition, cohesive imagery, and a sustained sense of anxious witness.
Themes
Critic's Take
La Dispute's No One Was Driving the Car finds its best tracks in the muscular opener “I Shaved My Head” and the rousing “Man with Hands and Ankles Bound”, songs that return the band to jagged, post-hardcore riffing while retaining Dreyer's wounded storytelling. The quieter moments like “Autofiction Detail” and “Self-Portrait Backwards” showcase Dreyer's near-tearful vocals and make a strong case as essential cuts. Fans searching for the best songs on No One Was Driving the Car will also find reward in the gradual build of “Saturation Diver”, whose climactic cacophony underlines the album's emotional core. Overall, the record balances abrasive guitars and sombre intimacy to deliver some of the best tracks of La Dispute's later career.
Key Points
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The best song is the opener because its fuzzy bass and angsty vocals set a compelling, muscular tone.
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The album's core strengths are its return to guitar-driven post-hardcore energy and Dreyer's emotionally charged storytelling.
Themes
Critic's Take
La Dispute’s No One Was Driving The Car finds its best songs in the opening shock of “I Shaved My Head” and the taut spiral of “Environmental Catastrophe Film”. The reviewer's voice lingers on those tracks because they encapsulate the album’s fragile, claustrophobic power, while the rawer heft of “Man With Hands and Ankles Bound” deepens the sense of desperation. This is a thoughtful, powerful reflection on modern life, and the best tracks are the ones that make that reflection feel immediate and terrifying. The reviewer consistently praises the band’s construction of intensity, so queries about the best tracks on No One Was Driving The Car should start with “I Shaved My Head” and “Environmental Catastrophe Film”.
Key Points
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The best song is best because its sparse, intense opening crystallises the album’s claustrophobic power.
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The album’s core strengths are its thematic focus on technological dependence and its ability to render desperation with fragile, poetic intensity.
Themes
Critic's Take
La Dispute’s fifth album, No One Was Driving The Car, stakes its best tracks in scenes of intimate panic and politicised grief, with “I Shaved My Head” and “Environmental Catastrophe Film” emerging as the standout moments. The reviewer hears Jordan Dreyer’s stream-of-consciousness sing-speak powerfully on “I Shaved My Head” and credits the eight-minute “Environmental Catastrophe Film” for pressing “panic” into art. Elsewhere the jittery breathlessness of “Steve” and the shapeshifting epic “Top-Sellers Banquet” show the band’s regained instinctive reach. This is an evocative, five-act odyssey where the best songs are those that fuse personal reckoning with urgent, widescreen ideas.
Key Points
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The best song is the opener “I Shaved My Head” because its sing-speak lyricism crystallises the album’s personal panic.
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The album’s core strength is fusing intimate self-interrogation with widescreen political and technological themes.