The Dismemberment Plan

By the time the Dismemberment Plan broke up in early 2003, the Washington, D.C., foursome had become among the most influential bands in underground emo. But, while they deserved every bit of the credit they got, singer-guitarist Travis Morrison, drummer Joe Easley, bassist Eric Axelson, and guitarist Jason Caddell (all but Easley also played keyboard) did not represent their subgenre so much as twist it into a pretzel, crossing punk, funk, new wave, and smarty-pants pop.

! could not have been better titled. Morrison rants, screams, and even sings prettily over a mish-mash of sounds that draws from D.C. punk's long his-tory: Minor Threat's jittery hardcore, Rites of Spring's fractured emo, Jawbox's majestic melancholy, and Fugazi's own dub-influenced hodge-podge. Easley, one of indie rock's best drummers and the Dismemberment Plan's purest talent, hadn't even joined the band yet. Morrison's oddball sense of humor even cut through all the racket; an otherwise dark number features the chorus (also its title), "Onward, Fat Girl."

In a reversal as sudden as the band's time-signature changes, The Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified ditched in-your-face punk in favor of brainy anything-goes indie. Morrison squeaks most of "That's When the Party Started" in a playful falsetto, as if he's just huffed helium, and guitar and keyboard intertwine in a woozy, screeching breakdown. In one of the best emo songs ever, "The Ice of Boston," Morrison delivers a deadpan spoken-word narrative over a cool lounge-rock groove, and breaks into an anthemic but still lovely chorus. Relating a shitty New Year's Eve, he describes "two million drunk Bostonians/singing 'Auld Lang Syne' out of tune," stripping and pouring champagne on his head as his mother calls on the phone, and confronting a former lover: "So I guess the party line is I followed you up here/Well, I don't know about that/Mainly because knowing about that would involve knowing some pathetic, ridiculous, and absolutely true things about myself/that I'd rather not admit to right now." More than just another indie rocker fixated on romantic dysfunction -- and there are plenty of them -- Morrison was admitting absolutely true things about himself, and unearthing as much joy as disappointment.

In 1998, the Plan released an EP, The Ice of Boston, on Interscope, but were soon dropped from the label. (The disc is no longer in print.) Their distinguished return to the indie world, Emergency and I, includes a frantic meditation on what would happen if the sun simply went out, named for how long it takes sunlight to reach the earth: "81/2 Minutes." That space of time, when feelings would be not only bared but driven to extremes, dramatizes what the album is all about. "Memory Machine," an ironic fantasy about someday being able to erase "longing" ("Poetry, Aldous Huxley -- yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll be a relief"), sounds like a mechanical failure, with Easley's spectacularly stuttering beat, almost random bursts of bass, and alarm bells of guitar and keyboard, but the song also captures the chaos of emotion. The frenetic, inventive rockers and borderline-creepy ballads here begin to make sense of that chaos.

The exceedingly tender and exquisitely tense Change, on the other hand, hums like a car cruising down a lonesome highway. Even at the end of "Superpowers," where one pounding guitar chord gives way to astringent, off-key notes, the inexorable pull of the desire -- to return to the past for a better future, for anything other than the here and now -- cannot be shaken. In the live staple "Time Bomb," Morrison quavers, "I lay forgotten at the bottom of your heart/I'm fine, ticking away the years, until I blow your world apart." Having exploded the conventions of emo and indie rock itself, the Dismemberment Plan left behind a catalogue of music that will surely continue to change the inner worlds of young romantics. (NICK CATUCCI)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide