The Dismemberment Plan
Change
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The Dismemberment Plan
Change
Desoto, 2001
RiYL: Talking Heads, The Police, Pearl Jam, Shudder To Think |
This is just one of many industry trends bucked with authority by the Dismemberment Plan, whose creative growth from album to album continues to amaze on Change. Produced by longtime collaborator J. Robbins (Burning Airlines, Jawbox) and D.C. studio veteran Chad Clark, the 11-song set takes the Plan to the next level in every sense of the word. It's mature and serious without talking down to the audience, lyrically compelling without resorting to caricature or convoluted metaphors, and musically original in a way that very few rock bands -- underground or otherwise -- can equal at this late date.
Change is simply an immediate eye-opener. From a band that has made bizarre song structures and time changes one of its calling cards, "Sentimental Man" kicks thing off with perhaps the most dreamy and fluid track the Plan have ever put to tape. The existential struggle to communicate what seem to frontman Travis Morrison to be obvious emotions ("is it really so hard to see these things? / I guess it is") is refreshingly bemused, abetted by the band's supple, Police-style groove.
"How do you know I'm not a sentimental man?," Morrison quizzes a partner right before bed, so as to leave his sleep-mate pondering the issue all night long. It is here, and with and the scores of other questions raised throughout Change, that Morrison once again transcends the typical storytelling constraints of your average indie rock band. Perhaps here more than any prior Plan album, he makes you think, hard. Song narrators are alternately untrustworthy, brutally honest, agitated, meek, or a combination of each.
A host of songs go beyond their apparent surface observations for probing examinations of just what it means to be a functioning member of society. At times, the solutions are easy. If only the subject of "Come Home" would do just that, the narrator could "clear the fog." But usually, there is no obvious answer. "The Face Of The Earth" ponders the human grief impulse, in other words, how sad would you -- and should you -- be if someone you'd gone out with on a few dates died suddenly?
The expressive breakthrough on Change comes on its closing track, "Ellen And Ben," which offers a fascinating disconnect not only with the music (think "Back And Forth" from Emergency & I) and its accompanying lyrics, but with the narrator from the story itself.
The titular characters meet, fall in love, desert their friends and the "scene," and eventually break up "loudly at a wedding." But why? Why do we care, when the narrator doesn't really seem to, either? Why does he suddenly interject an anecdote about his childhood book of fighter jets, only to close it up with an invitation to "call me when you can / You know I would love a surprise." This denial of explanation -- the inability to grab the person by the shoulders and shout, "what the hell?" -- threads itself throughout Change.
Musically, the album sets new standards for just what the Plan can do. Like Is Terrified's "This Is The Life" and the last album's "The City," "The Face Of The Earth" unveils a breathtaking groove that will immediately demand top billing in your mental jukebox. "Superpowers" weds Quincy Jones/Kool & The Gang-style R&B bottom end to neo-psychedelic guitar and keyboard work, creating something fist-pumping and head-spinning all at once. Even more confounding is "The Other Side," which coils an electronically smudged melody around the kind of 150 beats-per-minute rhythm more at home at jungle night in the local dance club. Aphex Twin would be proud.
Elsewhere, the Plan nod to familiar influences. The intense singing and roof-raising riffs of "Secret Curse" lead back to the group's 2000 opening stint with Pearl Jam as well as D.C. scene luminaries like Shudder To Think, while "Pay For The Piano" updates the band's earlier rump-shaking calls to action such as "Doin' The Standin' Still" with blues/garage licks and sweet chord changes. "Time Bomb" goes right for the jugular, its gripping vocal delivery and bludgeoning hook reminding that this band is not to be trifled with when edgy.
There is an aching need for bands like the Dismemberment Plan right now, who are simultaneously driven by 50 years of rock history but positively committed to crafting something fresh. It's hard to imagine what the Plan could do to top Change, but one thing is for sure: growing up and looking forward has rarely sounded so universally satisfying.
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"