hen Washington DC’s Dismemberment Plan announced their imminent breakup on their website early this year, reactions varied considerably. Some saw it as the end of an era, the death of a band that had the potential to once again expand the admittedly loose boundaries of indie rock. Many others cried good riddance. And I suppose it’s not hard to see why. In the two years since their now-final album Change was released, a lot has happened. The rise of bands like The Rapture, Hot Hot Heat and !!! signaled a new wave of disparate influence, while the popularity of groups like Deerhoof, the Blood Brothers, and Dalek pointed to a continuing acceptance of the bizarre. So you can see why it’s easy to think that the Plan have outlived their relevance—maybe they have. Yet, at the same time, it’s hard to not notice their considerable influence on today’s underground. Although it’s rarely acknowledged, The Dismemberment Plan mattered.
Colin McElligatt
01. They Absorbed Everything
At their peak on 1997’s The Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified and 1999’s Emergency & I, the band touched on everything in your record collection, as well as plenty of stuff beyond it. Not afraid to dabble in funk rhythms and hip-hop pacing, the group showed a zest for music that has rarely been rivaled. Eric Axelson’s bass snaked its way around Joe Easley’s always mind-boggling beats without ever deteriorating into tired slap-bass pandering on tracks like “I Love a Magician” and “Memory Machine”, while singer/songwriter/guitarist Travis Morrison spat words out at a frenzied, rhythmic, and rap-like pace allowing for no comparisons. Although hints of dozens of bands cropped up at once, there was always an strictly original element to be found—the band were listeners, not emulators. With this approach, even dabbles in dub (“Face of the Earth”) and live drum n’ bass (“The Other Side”) came out earnestly and meticulously, never sounding like mere genre exercises. While this polymathic approach rendered them an instant “critic’s band”, The Plan’s style-mashing didn’t pillage the past-- it integrated it into a vehicle that would take rock into the new millennium and beyond.
02. They (Re-) Introduced Dance Elements into the Underground
American indie rock has never been all that keen on dance music, and it shows. Not until recently has a major scene emerged to embrace disco, funk, microhouse, and the rest. And yet, on tracks like “Tonight We Mean It” and “Back and Forth”, the band melds skuzzy rock and ebullient lyrical confession (respectively) with rolling beats that engage the feet. Years before, groups like The Contortions wildly channeled fractured jazz-disco into their caustic tunes, but never with the sheer joyful wonder of The Plan.
03. They Embraced The Mainstream, Past and Present
On a sidebar of the band’s website rested a list labeled “The Top 10 Songs of All-Time (Right Now)” which detailed whatever engaged the group’s ears at the time. Along with the music of tour mates, compatriots, and classic hipster fodder could often be found a handful of chart-topping hits from groups that would hardly be considered listenable by many of the band’s fans. And yet the band embraced this music as they would any other, without irony and with an open mind. And man, how times have changed. Internet communities like I Love Music intensely debate the merits of the current top 40, often preferring it to much of what the indie underground has to offer, a sentiment that Morrison often echoes. Their covering of Jennifer Paige’s noxious hit “Crush” on a 2001 EP, as well as the integration of a number of blockbuster pop into their eternal finale, “OK, Joke’s Over”, only reiterated their wide-wide reaching acceptance of anything that sounds good.
04. They Shunned Inhibitions
In one of their most infamous and popular songs, “Doing The Standing Still”, The Plan poked vicious fun at the stoic underground that ruled supreme for much of the late 90s. Through their frenzied and frequently legendary shows, The Plan made it their mission to destroy any apprehension the crowd might have. The result was often like the famed “Fireside Bowl Dance Competition”, where fans let loose for hours while the band rocked ferociously, relieved that someone finally understood. Think about that next time the girl beside you looks like Flashdance at the Rainer Maria show.
05. They Were Accessible
After nearly 10 years of seemingly incessant touring, the band almost assuredly hit nearly every state in the union, and multiple times. For a group with their relative prominence, this speaks volumes about their dedication to fans. Whether it was at Chicago’s Metro, New York City’s Bowery Ballroom, or the corner of a dorm basement in central Iowa, the Plan gave it their all and sat down after the show for as long as it took to talk to everyone who was willing. In a nod to both their punk roots and forward-looking mindsets, interviews were granted to Spin and student newspapers alike, and with equal interest. Once again straddling the line between DIY and commercialism, the group always brought their music to the people that wanted to hear it, and on their own accord.
06. They Stayed True To Their Roots
Although they never signed with hometown stalwart label Dischord, the Dismemberment Plan was DC, through and through. While the band wisely separated their politics from their songs, Morrison and Axelson frequently weighed in on the city’s (and sometimes, the country’s) issues with a noticeable fervor for their home. They played DC constantly with a massive supporting cast of up-and-coming local bands (and, like Fugazi, they were yearly attendees of the summer’s Fort Reno concerts), showing a dedication to their home scene that is too often forgotten today.Of course, their part in this community was never insular, they still never let you forget it with the near-trademark introduction “We’re The Dismemberment Plan from Washington, DC”.
07. “The City”
What’s there to be said about this song? Not only is it a successful near-summation of everything the band aimed to do, but it’s nearly perfect in every way. Chiming guitars, Easley’s not-quite-funk-not quite-anything-else beat, an utterly epic winding synth, and Morrison at his most sonorous, with his best twenty-something lyricism in full display. The result is an absolute juggernaut, one of the great songs of the past ten years. When I think back on the four D-Plan shows I was fortunate enough to witness, it’s this song I’ll most remember. No matter where they were playing, they turned the place into a warehouse.
08. They Made an Album on the Major Label Dime and Got It Back For Free
Pre-Wilco. Self-Explanatory.
09. They Quit While They Were Ahead
The main reason specified for the impending breakup was a creative loss—the band felt that they had run their course idea-wise. When you think about it, plenty more groups could benefit from this sort of introspection. Their last album, Change, was a corker. Despite occasional dragging and a carbon copied track, it saw them creating yet another logical extension of their previous work, and a delve into new territory. Although it would seem that the potential was there to do this with a fifth album, it became quite apparent from their new songs (performed in concert) that it was not. Rather than release a sub-par album to appease fans, the group bowed out with grace. Slow grace.
10. They Gave You an Opinion
Love them or hate them, The Dismemberment Plan made you think, which is something rare these days. Their music was not confrontational, but it engaged your mind by forcing its very likeness into your brain. When their songs really hit—and sometimes even when they didn’t—the end result was a spectacle with all the band’s elements congealing; traces of their collective personality, musical or otherwise, were in full display, and all you could do was react. Whether it was negatively or positively was too far beyond relevance.
Stylus Staff
Since this article is, more than anything, a look back at the Dismemberment Plan's illustrious career, we here at Stylus thought it would be appropriate for different staff members to weigh in on the group's catalogue. Opinions about the band and their works varied from writer to writer, which makes this section all the more interesting. This is what four different scribes had to say about each of the band's loosely defined eras.
[!, 1995]
In light of the Plan’s varied later accomplishments, their relatively single-minded debut ! comes across as a bit of a disappointment. But taken -- as it should be -- on its own merits, it’s a pure adrenaline rush of a record that hits harder and spazzier than anything else the band ever did. A few of the loonier moments (the bouncy mania of “13th and Euclid,” the abrasive chug of opener “Survey Says,” the chiming cymbals and handclaps on the poppy “Soon to Be Ex-Quaker”) hinted at the kitchen-sink approach of their later albums, but most of these songs excel at simplicity: great pop songs couched in the dressings of loud DC-influenced punk.
And while the songs are simple, it certainly doesn’t mean they’re not good. The muscular riffing of the ultimate fuck-off tune, “OK Jokes Over,” still provided a foundation for the band’s legendary end-of-set jamming eight years later at the end of their career, and that says a lot for the song’s longevity. Similarly enduring are the slow-burning lament of “If I Don’t Write,” the all-knobs-in-the-red loser’s anthem “Onward, Fat Girl,” and the evocative closing ballad “Rusty.” With a batch of songs this strong -- plus some quirky, fun experimentation -- calling ! merely a promising debut is a huge understatement.
[Ed Howard]
[The Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified, 1997]
It’s hard, then, to look at The Dismemberment Plan’s second full-length, 1997's Is Terrified, without instantly seeing what was to come in their later offerings with the flirtings of Talking Heads groove, Gang Of Four funk, DC punk, and earnest offerings of redemption and sorrow (okay, only the last track). While 1995's ! was deemed a nearly-emo effort, this record is a fantastic departure, a sort of ode to getting the fuck down in the oddest way possible. Nearly all songs are instantly danceable and ingratiatingly catchy, with hooks to spare—though usually in a manner that seems to be aggressive just to be aggressive.
Tracks like "Academy Award," "Tonight We Mean It," "One Too Many Blows To The Head," and "Do The Standing Still" are all aimed for the jugular, delightfully edgy and off-kilter spastic tracks of everything the band can get their hands on. Somehow, the tangentially wild guitar stabs work with gliding bass, and on "Head," synth stabs fit perfectly with the free-jazz trombone. Most noticeable, is the fine voice of Travis Morrison, wildly screaming into space, the very intentionally noisy essence tying together all the loose strands underneath in a cosmic mess.
Is Terrified sounds for all the world like a revolt against the DC hardcore scene the D-Plan were birthed from, desperately, desperately trying with everything to get the kids to dance, leading to some of Morrison’s best lines about playing a show where he thought the audience "were bored out of their minds / but it turns out they were having a ball." Touching on a lonely New Years Eve where he finds himself covered in champagne, or derailing against the attempts of hipster authenticity, or ... well, a lot of really interesting shit. And it only gets better in 1999, a lot better.
[Sam Bloch]
[Emergency & I, 1999]
Emergency & I didn’t just cement The Dismemberment Plan’s reputation; it propelled them into the stratosphere, creatively at least. Previously chancers with some weird time changes and eclectic record collections, they now appeared to be on the cusp of breaking new artistic ground simply by being in love with everything they heard. Who else had done it before? Talking Heads? Scritti Politti? The Clash? Maybe; but those artists were all working 15 or 20 years ago and people had found themselves set in their ways again. ...Is Terrified might have been in thrall to hip-hop, but Emergency & I was in thrall to everything. For a little-known DC band to start smashing down those precious hardcore preconceptions...
But fuck the talk and listen to the music. Eric Axelson and Joe Easley were now the best rhythm section since, hell, when? I don’t know. Travis Morrison quavering just the right side of hysterical and finding himself in the realm of the emotive, Jason Caddell doing everything he knows how to do and most things he doesn’t too, the whole band shifting round keyboards, nothing taking precedence, ideas ideas ideas and the tunes to match. Listen to “The City” or “Back and Forth” again and tell me that, above all, Emergency & I isn’t just a damn great pop record, before and after everything else.
[Nick Southall]
[Split EP with Juno, 2001]
The Plan’s pair of songs on this split single showcase both sides of the band’s schizophrenic personality. “...Gets Rich” is their live showstopper, a circus sideshow of a party track, all hilarious bragging raps from Travis and uncontrolled hysteria letting loose from the band. By the time the end of the EP rolls around, though, the Plan’s been put in check, their mania calmed to a quiet simmer. They stretch out Jennifer Paige’s dance-pop hit “Crush” into a stark meditation on loss and obsession. Each time Travis says “it’s just some little crush,” I shiver, it’s so full of naked sorrow and possibly even a tinge of insanity. When the music completely shifts midway through from the minimal repetition of the first half to a more full-bodied passage dominated by lilting melodic guitar, it lightens the tension, and the transition is sublime. Juno’s two contributions -- the anthemic “Non-Equivalents” and a playing-it-straight cover of DJ Shadow’s classic “High Noon” -- ain’t too shabby either.
[Ed Howard]
[Change, 2001]
How does a band follow up a spastic masterpiece like Emergency & I? Inevitably, the answer is with a more "mature" release (which in this case, is un-obscurely titled Change). What many bands don't realize, though, is that a calmer sound and a greater focus on lyrics do not make an album more accomplished. On "Following Through", Travis Morrison addresses personal issues such as the title's as directly as he can, but the result is a trite chorus of "I can do it anywhere/ with anyone/ at any time/ don't you forget/ this my life/ and it's going to be good", which nearly ruins an otherwise great song. Such platitudes make you wonder how Travis could possibly be the same man behind classics like "Spider in the Snow" or "The City", especially when similarly objectionable lyrics crop up throughout the album.
Musically, Change slips a few times as well, as the band attempts classic rock on "Secret Curse", purports to update its past, frenetic sound on "Pay for the Piano", or worst of all, goes minimal for the "Jitters"-esque number, "Automatic." Of course, the album is hardly devoid of strengths; the first three tracks are all excellent, especially "Face of the Earth." "Time Bomb", easily Change's pinnacle moment, features the Plan's energy at its purest and most sincere, rivaling anything off of ...Is Terrified or Emergency & I in terms of sheer brilliance. Change disappoints after Emergency & I and as the group's final word, but it offers its share of greatness as well.
[Kareem Estefan]
ARTISTS/FANS OF THE D-PLAN
You now know what we, the writers, think about The Dismemberment Plan, so why not turn it over to the artists? Stylus asked a small, yet varied, group about their favorite D-Plan. Here are the responses:
Elizabeth Elmore (Sarge, The Reputation)
Man, I can't even choose a favorite song. For me, the Plan is one of those bands with so many songs that are intertwined with certain parts of my life. Part of growing up, part of being a member of this community, part of good times and amazing, and sometimes, embarrassing stories. I've been playing with those boys for 7 or 8 years now and I have so memories attached to them - one of the best of which is playing some crazy house party in Athens in the summer of '98 with them and Calvin Krime. My old band, Sarge, was on tour with both bands and our house show got combined with another hardcore house show. I think there were more people in bands there than people at the show. Basically everyone drank a tremendous amount of Jack Daniels and it devolved into utter chaos. I love those boys but I also wish I was big enough to kick their asses - they're mean to me in a way I'm sure I'd understand if I'd ever had big brothers. Anyway, I can't choose a favorite song but I'm going to go with “Timebomb” for now because before [The Reputation] played a show with them in Madison, Travis came up to me and said, "We have a new song and you're going to fucking love it." And I heard it and I did.
Matthias Schulz (Enon)
I suppose my favorite D-Plan song is "The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich". It has a lot of bonkers samples going off, and Eric plays one of his classic, rubbery bass lines in it. Of course the heart-pounding tempo gets my blood boiling as well. Believe it or not, I used to not be a fan of theirs. I was watching them once years ago, getting ready to walk out the door, and they started playing the song. It must have been right around the time they wrote it. I stopped, turned around, and ran back to the front. That song blew me away. It didn't sound like any of their other songs. Once I met them and toured with them, the magic of their songs dawned on me. Call me a latecomer, but that song turned it all around for me. Now I love many of their songs.
Kim Coletta (Jawbox, Co-founder DeSoto Records)
What's not to love about "The City”? Archetypal in its Plan-ness, emotionally reverberant without being emo, danceable without being fluff, artistic without being art-school, weewoo keyboards without being Emerson, Lake and Palmer. My favorite with a bullet.
Bob Massey (Gena Rowlands Band)
Everyone else will probably choose "Ice of Boston" or "You Are Invited," and perhaps rightly. Those songs will last. But the Dismemberment Plan song which haunts me more than any other is "Face of the Earth," from Change. It's a story of a walk along a beach, a kiss, and a woman's disappearance. "It's been a couple years and I guess I'm fine about it. It's not like we were married, it was three or four months...I never really knew the way she lived her life..." Whether metaphorically or literally doesn't matter much. Maybe there was someone you kissed once who's gone from your life, whichever way. It's the loss that makes you wonder.
Rjyan Kidwell (Cex, #1 D-Plan Fan)
Picking my favorite song is hard. There's so much ground-breaking rock music on ...Is Terrified, and so many songs that seem to be about very specific things that have happened to me on Emergency & I and Change... and it probably wouldn't be fair to pick the post-Change song "Born in 72," which had my favorite lyrics ever even before Travis told me they were partly inspired by the tracks I was performing on theDeath & Dismemberment Tour. I'd have to say that if I have to pick one, my alltime favorite song is "Life of Possibilities." It's the first song on Emergency & I, which was really the big turning point for these dudes, and I can't imagine a more subversive statement a band could start out their indie rock megastardom with. I think the message Travis delivers about the long-term repercussions of hiding from society and the world and the big picture is something the indie rock world still hasn't gotten yet. It's a total wake-up call-- "Look, dudes---you're burrowing into the 'underground' where it's dark and you don't have to see or deal with everyone else, and then you whine and cry when the world on the surface has no need for you." For a long time I thought the song ended with the lyrics, "So don't be surprised when they don't remember you, you simply don't want them to," until I read the liner notes and found out I was slightly off. I still think that's the smackdown, though, right there. Shit, though-- isn't "Memory Machine" the second song on Emergency & I? Yeah, another song that's almost the complete antithesis of what your average indie hipster believes, and yet no one's raised a fuss about its call for technology to delve more explicitly into the search for human happiness. It might be ten years before people realize exactly what the Plan were saying. Let's hope that when that happens, there will be a Two Against Nature coming our way. Well, maybe a little better than Two Against Nature, but you know what I mean.
Header photograph by Armando Bellmas, All rights reserved - www.bellmas.org
|
By: Stylus Staff Published on: 2003-08-25 Comments (0) |