Audio By Carbonatix
Tonight’s the night for you playa-haters who think post-punk equals post-important. The Dismemberment Plan, from Washington, D.C., makes rock and roll rooted in guitars and their traditional baggage, but it deviates from the norm via an ever-expanding vocabulary of tricks learned by paying close attention to the lunatic fringe working at rock’s outermost boundaries. Or they’re just sick of playing three chords for three minutes.
Either way, the Plan should’ve changed your mind with 1999’s Emergency & I, its best album and, in my opinion, the best record released that year. A study in the kind of funny-sad theatrics that made me fall in love with writer Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Emergency would make for compelling listening if it consisted solely of singer/guitarist/sort-of heartthrob Travis Morrison reciting his lyrics over a rudimentary guitar drone and a malfunctioning iBook. (Oh, wait, that’d be Joan of Arc.)
Onstage, that schizophrenic zeal reaches its zenith: Morrison grinds his hips madly, dropping bits of popular radio tunes into the melee. I’ve seen him do Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor” and Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up,” both at least as well as their authors. Expect more of that this time, as the band’s just released a split EP with Seattle band Juno, on which the Plan dismantles Jennifer Paige’s 1998 hit “Crush.” Cross your heart, and maybe they’ll play stuff from Changes, too, the new album the band just finished mixing with D.C. stalwarts J. Robbins and Chad Clark; request “Time Bomb” and watch your own head spin.
