La Dispute: Panorama 12″

Description

Hardcore luminariesLa Disputereturn with theirfourth albumPanorama. Their first album in four years and first with Epitaph,Panoramawas produced by the band in tandem with return producerWill Yipcombining jazz, rock, slowcore, noise, hardcore among other influences over the span of 10 tracks. It’s a highly ambitious and deeply affecting body of work that filters narrative storytelling through a personal lens, like a set of Joan Didion essays set to music.Where the past two albums had vocalistJordan Dreyerdelving further into fictional subject matter, it’s withPanoramathat the band has created the most personal project since their breakthroughSomewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair, an album whose influence has been palpable within the genre over the course of the past decade.

Most of what happens onPanoramatakes place on the route Jordan and his partner would drive from their home in the East Hills neighborhood of Grand Rapids to the city of Lowell, where she grew up. Everywhere along the drive are places where, in varying degrees of recency, people have died: a pond where a man drowned walking home in the winter, multiple places where people crashed driving drunk or were killed in car accidents, and one place where years prior a city worker found a Jane Doe decomposed.Panoramais intended to be a wide angled shot of that drive, with the stories of those tragedies becoming focal points but filtered through the sieve of the couple’s life together.