They say that the world will end not with a bang but a whimper, and if Michigan band’s La Dispute’s seminal album Wildlife was the bang, its successor, Rooms of the House is the whimper – slightly quieter but just as violent.
With one anniversary show for the record taking place in Sydney to commemorate its 10th anniversary, we spoke to frontman Jordan Dreyer about the understated magnum opus that Rooms of the House became.
A blend of historical fiction interwoven with the breakdown of a relationship, Rooms of the House as a body of work has captivated audiences with its intimate complexity over the ten years since its release, as fans strive to untangle Dreyer’s memories from the broader concept of the record. “A lot of the record is pure fiction,” he clarifies. “But the historical songs are drawn from real-life experience, and there are other songs where I borrowed from my own life to both make the world feel more real, to give a background to these characters, and also to work as symbols for the experience of the primary character on the record.”
One such song is ‘First Reactions After Falling Through The Ice’, which was inspired by Dreyer falling into a lake when he was young. “The event in that song, the character falling through the ice and being pulled out and drying by a fire—that’s something that happened to me,” he states. “And I just thought it was a really good metaphor for the experience of the character on the record: the bottom falling out below you, partly because of something you did or something you didn’t do. I thought the image of somebody checking first to see if their phone was working was really heavy. So it’s real life and a metaphor.”
Despite the rawness of the full-length being deeply rooted in Dreyer’s personal interests and experiences, its specificity doesn’t stop it from resonating—be it a decade ago or today. For an audience that has grown older, lamenting the delicate ends met by our relationships with each other has never been more meaningful, especially framed by the album’s musings on domestic emptiness. Dreyer captures this truth so bleakly that it almost feels like he’s voicing things we shouldn’t say (see “I guess in the end we just moved furniture around” from ‘For Mayor in Splitsville’). At the time of writing, he hadn’t yet fully experienced some of the subjects he explores, though the weight of life has since caught up with him.
“I think that has been an interesting part of this run of shows relative to the previous anniversary tour for Wildlife, a lot of it resonated in a new way…Going back and listening to Rooms again and playing these songs in full, I think I realised how much more they resonate with me further on in adulthood, having experienced some of the traumas and collapses and complications on the record. I surprised myself a bit with how strong a grasp I had over a decade ago on what I was writing about without having personally experienced it.”
While gearing up to write Rooms of the House, the buzz of Wildlife’s success was still ringing in the band’s ears, as scene-goers who saw the lyrics of ‘King Park’ on every forum and dashboard could attest to. Dreyer acknowledges that there was a “degree of pressure” with the disclaimer that it’s difficult to get into “that headspace all these years later.”
“I think there was some added pressure because we were investigating new territory creatively, but also, I don’t know that we anticipated the way that Wildlife would click with people, particularly songs like ‘King Park’. But I also think that we try not to consider what the reception might be. I think when you invite additional perspectives into the creative space, it can make things more complicated and a bit less genuine. And it’s always been pretty important to us, because making music is the first thing that we love to do, to be fully immersed in it.”
In the spirit of continuing to make music, La Dispute will record their next album after their last anniversary show down under. Sidestepping any spoilers and instead asking what continues to motivate the band, Dreyer offers that La Dispute “feel very motivated by each other,” especially in the wake of not being able to do what they love throughout the pandemic.
“I think we feel as motivated or more than we ever have to make music, because we couldn’t for so long. Coming back to play Wildlife and then Rooms of the House has been really fulfilling and fun and humbling – to see so many people who connected with things we’d made – that we just got done with it and thought, ‘Oh, we want to make another thing now.’ We’re all fucking stoked and we haven’t recorded yet, but we are actually leaving in three days to go to the studio, so we’ll go to Australia to play a show and then to record. We’re feeling better than we have in a long time.”
