The genre-defying La Despute are hitting the UK next week for four dates in support of their latest album, No One Was Driving the Car.
Their first full-length album since 2019’s Panorama, No One Was Driving the Car, is heavily influenced by the 2017 psychological thriller First Reformed.
Released in several acts over the course of 2025, for example, track one of Act IV, released in September, ‘Top-Sellers Banquet’, imitates the film’s levitation scene as the band’s lyricist and vocalist, Jordan Dreyer, narrates a ballet performance at a marketing company’s banquet, where the dancers become suspended in the air.
Dreyer explains: “the next act was heavily inspired by a particular scene in First Reformed, where the film’s two primary characters connect through a ritual of remembrance and comfort, traveling beyond their plane of reality into some otherworldly beyond. The record’s spiritual/metaphysical event happens here, in the middle of a banquet held by the multi-level marketing company mentioned in the fourth song from the prior act in celebration of their fiscal year’s highest performers.
“After a welcome speech, and while the provided entertainment (ballet dancers accompanied by a small orchestra) begins between tables on the floor, a sudden flash of light occurs, an indescribable sound accompanying it, and light begins to fall through the hall’s high ceilings down, focused only on the non-employees in attendance (the dancers, the servers, the players, valets), at which point they begin to rise impossibly skyward, leaving the others invited attendees and higher ups behind.
“The narrator returns in the next song, discussing again the slow dissociation mentioned in act one, through the image of a saturation diver tangled in his oxygen line. He realises he remains on earth after the “rapture” of the previous track passes, and reflects again on the journey taken to arrive there, alone and un-beamed up.”
Full dates below. Tickets are available at the usual places.
February 18 – SWG3, Glasgow
February 19 – Club Academy, Manchester
February 20 – The Tramshed, Cardiff
February 21 – Electric Ballroom, London