**The Short Review:**If you consider yourself a fan of groundbreaking pop, go out and buy this album right now. Now. Get up. Go.
**The Long Review:**Judd handed me a purple children's book and said, "Check this out." The hardback felt about the size of a gatefold double vinyl album. In bold letters, the cover proclaimed The Worst Band in the Universe! Immediately we opened the book in an attempt to discern which band the author, Graeme Base, had in mind while writing the picture book. Toto and Gomez came to mind. Yet upon finishing the first page, I muttered, "Man, this book is about The Dismemberment Plan."
As Pitchfork readers know, I like to come up with wild and crazy scenarios for record reviews. The songs from the Plan's latest record, Emergency & I, had been making love to my brain for over a year, and I wanted my review to perfectly capture my faith and prophecy for the album. Ironically, "the worst band in the universe" captured my sentiments perfectly. The book begins:
On Planett Blipp, beyond the stars, beyond the sun and moon,The world was ruled by music-- but tradition called the tune.The Ancient Songs of ages past were all that could be heard,And no one was allowed to change a single note or word.
To write a new tune was heresy, to play it even worse,And anyone who improvised was scowled upon and cursed.For years untold the temple walls had rung to songs of yore--Until the day a brave young groob named Sprocc rewrote the score.
He took his trusty Spligtwanger, and though he knew 'twas wrong,He cranked the volume up to ten and played a Brand New Song.
The elders banish Sprocc from his planet, leaving him to wander the galaxy with his ragtag band. They stumble upon a contest for "the worst band in the universe," and naturally win. As it's a children's book, Sprocc and his jamming outfit return home and establish a new order of song. Lessons are learned. Hands are held. Cue sunset, go to sleep, little babies.
The Dismemberment Plan spit in the face of modern music. Perhaps their coup is more analogous to an unexpected sloppy french kiss, in terms of saliva imagery. But Emergency & I heralds a new era in rock and roll. Nothing else you own sounds like this record, yet everything you own echoes throughout. The Dismemberment Plan's chromosomes carry the superior DNA of rock's genealogy through a natural sexual affair with music, not the cold process of cloning. The perfect nucleotides of the Pixies, Talking Heads, Fugazi, and Prince spindle in beautiful double-helixes throughout these 12 tracks. Specific moments recall Gang of Four ("8\xBD Minutes") or Radiohead ("The Jitters"), but this melange is wholly unique-- boiled down for synapse-popping flavor. Certainly some will scratch their heads, but innovation is never unanimously understood.
Keyboards are enjoying a recent renaissance in rock. I believe even Snapcase tour with a Korg. But while pop groups are content to sprinkle Moog hooks or create false string sections with their Yamahas, The Dismemberment Plan squeeze alien funk and digital soul from their ebony and ivory. Deep, gurgling squirts carry "A Life of Possibilities" in place of bass. Mainframe bleeps add android soul to "Memory Machine". An overly synthesized score shifts behind "Spider in the Snow", mocking pop's traditional signifier for "delicate", yet inevitably sounding even more sincere. But the beautiful, yearning hum that hangs over "The City" like purple-orange sky pollution emotes more than a bruised diva-- it simultaneously aches and uplifts. The tumbling drums pleasantly propel like public transit. Frustrated guitars chime like flashes of streetlights in passing puddles. The alienation and excitement, the desolate and the bustling-- the title simply envelopes the themes. By the time Travis Morrison begins crying, "All... I... ever... say... now... is... good... bye," angels are spooning out your stomach with ladles and visions of your distant past are punching you in the face.
The closing track, "Back and Forth", grooves into brilliance. Bringing to mind Talking Heads' Remain in Light, the layers lock in bliss. Funky drums, ticking guitar, synthetic slides, and joyous keyboard hooks circle tightly like bareback thoroughbreds in Siena's Palio. This track, along with the explosive "I Love a Magician" and "Girl O'Clock", hint at new futures. Hometown fans have staged elaborate costumed breakdancing during Dismemberment Plan sets, and these songs are the hormonal fuel. The Plan rule during schizophrenic dance-punk explosions, somehow finding middle ground between Brainiac and Prince. As a testament to the Plan's power, these songs have turned D.C.'s traditionally head-bobbing concert crowds into cathartic bacchanals. Can I get an "Amen?"
Around the time Kurt Cobain muttered "I think I'm dumb," lyricists gave up. Syncopated poetry, retro theft, and extended metaphor have ruled rock lyrics since. Perhaps more importantly than their music, the Plan offer a return to intelligent, ripe, narrative songwriting. An air of despair hangs over the album, spiked with humor and passion. A definite debt is owned to hip-hop and soul, but don't think that Morrison simply barks a sequence of rhyming phrases. He ponderously spits on "Back and Forth": "And faces slide by in glowing shadows like snowbound ghosts that go up and down in epileptic shivers and negative radioactive shivers in a landscape of endless dull glitter and a taste in my mouth so sweet, yet so bitter-- and we exhaust ourselves trying to get there." Philosophy is backed up with primitive yelps like, "Put your hands in the air," and the always popular "yeah!" Sex, death and humdrum lives are examined with alacrity. I guarantee you that if you're a twentysomething, post-collegiate human, "Spider in the Snow" and "Gyroscope" will knock you back into a couch and force a slight "fuck" from between your lips. At the very least, you'll hum along for the rest of your 20s.
I could spend pages examining this record. Everything down to the art is stunningly unique and perfectly appropriate. Even standard guitar pop numbers like "What Do You Want Me to Say" hit like a high-strung Weezer. A full range of emotions-- orgasm, loss, confusion, uncertainty, resignation, rage-- ooze from The Dismemberment Plan. Paradox is woven throughout-- the alien and the nostalgic, the nascent and the classic. It's unfortunate that the term "new wave" is still linked to the early 80s. Bands like Jets to Brazil are unimaginatively trying to revive that new wave sound. But The Dismemberment Plan is truly, unequivocally, the new new wave. Emergency & I, fittingly, was delayed until the close of the century. (Hey, Interscope, does "Boston Red Sox" ring any bells?) Let's get this era over with. Please form a line behind the fellows in the sweaty button-down shirts.
