The Rockfeedback A-Z of Underrated Records: The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I
By: Thomas Hannan
The Rockfeedback A-Z of Underrated Records is an ever expanding guide to albums, beloved by our writers if not the world at large, that we think you should know about. Records on the list are there in virtue of fulfilling a number of deliberately vague criteria. These can range from the LPs being unfairly slated at the time despite being fantastic, their being lost classics by underground artists that have failed to reach the audience they deserve, or true gems unjustly overshadowed by the huge commercial success of an artists' other work. It is our hope that the list will expand into being an exciting guide to collecting life changing records that might not feature in your usual 'The Greatest 100 Records You Must Listen to BEFORE YOU DIE' run downs, and that it will be enjoyed with all the enthusiasm and good natured humour with which it is intended.
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It's not often in this line of work that you feel like you're doing the world a favour, but when writing about Emergency & I, I'm overcome with a sense of just that. I'm pleased that I've evolved beyond indie puritanism to the extent that I don't want this band to be a secret, discussed by ever decreasing circles of geeks, any more. I've realised something. If you want it to be, this is indeed a songwriters album, a musician's album, but importantly it's also an album for people who have no care for how tunes are constructed, couldn't give a flying hoot about time signatures jumping around like fleas and are bored witless by any talk of the deft interplay between guitars and keyboards that defines the sonic texture of this remarkable piece of work. It's at once amongst the most complicated and yet easiest to enjoy of all the records I own.
A brief history will now follow. After a scratchy yet laudable debut (entitled '!'), Washington D.C.'s The Dismemberment Plan (D-Plan or just The 'Plan if you're a fan) released a fine record before this one in question, and a fine record after it, and then prematurely called it a day, now only reforming "to drink beer". The preceding ...Is Terrified contained some of the band's most applauded work, though its everything-including-the-kitchen-sink approach to song structure and relentless quirks did little to suggest they had a career beyond ever so slightly juvenile if wholly invigorating post-punk-math-pop-yeah. Jump forward two records, and Emergency & I's follow up, Change, found the band growing up, slowing down, stroking their beards and noticing that when they did, remarkable Radiohead-esque soundscapes and Sea Change-like introspection tended to fall out. 1999's Emergency & I, however, is their zenith, the perfect middle where they still had the balls to rock out like the kids who made ...Is Terrified, yet were beginning to unlock their potential as Super Serious Songwriters that would characterise the sound of Change. Bands are often at their most brilliant just before it's dawned on them how brilliant they are. This is the sound of a band right at that stage.
All great records have a great Track One. 'A Life Of Possibilities', Emergency & I's wonderful opener, jumps from jittery yet wholesome and catchy riff-rock to discordant though somehow anthemic big chord thwackery as if the two styles should only ever be enjoyed when juxtaposed in quite this way. And regardless of Travis Morrison's inimitable way as a wordsmith or the band's creation of such lush swathes of sound suggesting a maturity that belied their years at the time, it's in creating such a juxtaposition that The Dismemberment Plan's main talent lied. Emergency & I's most vital moments are indeed its quickest - 'Gyroscope' probably being the highlight, though the musings on the apocalypse alluded to in 'Eight and Half Minutes' and a frenetic 'I Love A Magician' are initially the others. These are the clinchers, the songs you'll love most on first encounter. But there's much more here, indeed, the potential to reap decades of enjoyment from it is one of the record's greatest strengths.
So, as for those lyrics... I'm not usually about the words, unless they're amazing. Keep my foot tapping or my chest sighing with a weird rhythm or lilting melody and usually I'm happy enough. Combine the two and I'll even tell my friends. But couple a band with the ability to do both'a those with frontman Morrison at the very top of his lyrical game - eschewing all the dodgy couplets and dubious topics that sadly characterise his solo work - and you've got one of my favourite records of all time on your hands. He can be startlingly matter of fact or narrative based (as on 'You Are Invited' and 'Spider in the Snow') or entirely out there, musing on the plus points of a half man half robot existence as evidenced in 'Memory Machine', and come across as simultaneously the cleverest asshole on the planet and the most gifted, tender storyteller of his generation regardless of which one he feels like doing and when.
The reason it's difficult to comprehend precisely why The 'Plan weren't insanely humungous is that, although they're from Washington D.C. and they're mates with Fugazi and it was released on the indier-than-thou De Soto records (why weren't they on Dischord, I hear you ask? I don't know either), this is by no means a difficult album to love. There are indie disco classics for a parallel universe - in all likelihood a better universe - that gladly litter Emergency & I, and the band are all the better for celebrating these tendencies towards the mainstream. 'What Do You Want Me To Say?' might be built around one single, relentlessly, torturously hammered note, but it contains enough catchy guitar play, sing-a-long-a moments and quirky turns of phrase ("go down the checklist... let's see... feelings are good, dishonesty is bad, but keeping it inside is worse still...") to suggest that it might just be the killer pop song that In Utero was missing. The right video, too, and the totally engrossing story that pop gem 'You Are Invited' is set to could have been an MTV mainstay. The world definitely missed a trick here.
But as with most great art (and this is superb art), you don't get the impression a particularly jolly man was responsible for it. The themes here are heavy. Morrison deals with everything from the futility of depression in a characteristically matter of fact way when he admits in 'The Jitters' that "nothing's wrong, I'm just fine, I've realised I just don't like jokes...", to the sexual frustration and self hate that comes with noticing the existence of one's basest instincts as a man in the frantic 'Girl O'Clock'. But his more maudlin side isn't constricted to his own personal loathing or dissection of the lethargy of being what Alan Partridge would call "clinically 'fed up'". When he addresses his longings directly towards an object of his affection, as on 'The City', it creates one of the most touching and genuinely romantic pieces of alternative rock these ears have e'er been privy to.
It's not a Travis Morrisson solo record though - no, there have been a couple of those, and though they don't deserve the slating they got from Pitchfork (is any record actually ever worthy of career destroying, 0/10 score?), they aren't really worth the time of more than the most avid D-Plan fan. The band play a blinder on this whole gosh darn thing. If we could understand the time signatures that rhythm section Eric Axelson and Joe Easly on bass and drums respectively created and somehow set our watches to them, it's likely that just through completion of that mammoth task we would have found a way to travel through time itself. Lead guitarist Jason Cadell plays like he's having the time of his life and thus it makes it all the easier for you to have the time of yours. And the whole while, they're each bashing synths with the joy of children smacking their siblings about the face with pots and pans.
Scrap what I said at the beginning. I have such an all consuming love for this record that I feel like I'm asking another man to show my wife a good time by unveiling its charms to you in such a way. But what's done is done. Take me up on the offer whilst it's still there.