La Dispute Announce 'Wildlife' New Zealand Shows

Hailing from Grand Rapids in Michigan, post-hardcore five-piece La Dispute are bringing their Wildlife tour to Aotearoa this August, returning for the first time in nine years with shows in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Tāmaki Makaurau. Revisiting their 2011 album Wildlife for the tour, the group reconnect the enduring legacy of that seminal record — which fraught through with themes of personal tragedy, isolation and disconnection, demonstrate the group's narrative and musical prowess in the face of difficult, albeit relevant concepts. Incorporating material from all across their genre-defying, heavy-hitting body of work, with their most recent record Panorama released in 2019 via Epitaph, don’t miss this rare opportunity to witness La Dispute playing Wildlife in full, plus more at the following dates...

La Dispute 'Wildlife' New Zealand Tour

Wednesday 30th August - Meow, Wellington*
Thursday 31st August - Hollywood Cinema, Auckland

Tickets available HERE via UTR
*Tickets available via moshtix.co.nz

Press release:

La Dispute is a band from Grand Rapids, MI. Wildlife is a record about it.

Released twelve years ago, Wildlife is an examination of a city in flux, the people who populate it, and the tragedies that befall them and us seemingly every day.

Told through the short stories and journal entries of a young man alone in a room, the record documents an individual’s search for meaning in the trials of others among the fallout of his own unnamed tragedy. It is an album for hard times, harsh landscapes, and for Now, as the last three years have proved its themes, in a sense, universal, or which have at least breathed new life into all art exploring how it is to find purpose among the ruins of modern existence.

With a sonic profile to match the rawness and emotion of the subject matter, and fresh off a frequently sold out US anniversary tour, La Dispute has in some ways returned to the place where it started all those years back: writing and performing songs of urgency, exploring earnestly what it means to be human, to hurt, and ultimately, what it might take to survive, in cities like and unlike Grand Rapids, all over the world.

La Dispute has never been a band prone to settling. The five-piece from Grand Rapids, Michigan, is responsible for some of the most uncompromising, experimental hardcore music of the last decade. From their 2008 debut (in their current formation) Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair, to 2011’s Wildlife, to 2015’s Rooms of the House, La Dispute have continually pushed themselves to find new ways to portray some of the most difficult and universally affecting subject matters. Casting a wide stylistic net that includes – but isn’t limited to – jazz, blues, spoken word, screamo and prog rock, La Dispute have developed a sound that, while constantly evolving, is unmistakably theirs.