La Dispute released Wildlife on 4 October 2011 through No Sleep Records. The 14-track album followed Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair from 2008.
Wildlife runs for nearly an hour, moving between long narrative songs and four shorter monologues. The structure lets Jordan Dreyer return to the same questions about purpose, loss and the events that alter a life without forcing every story into one continuous plot.
‘The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit’ was released before the album, while ‘King Park’, ‘Edward Benz, 27 Times’ and ‘I See Everything’ became the record’s most direct sequence of connected stories.
