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Political Beats
Episode 139: Peter Suderman / Dismemberment Plan
03:13:46
Scot and Jeff discuss the Dismemberment Plan with Peter Suderman.
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- [00:06]
Scott Bertram
Hello again everybody and welcome into another edition of Political Beats, a presentation of National Review. Find us on X at Political Beats and on Facebook Political Beats. We ask you to subscribe to our feed for new episodes through Apple Podcasts. Tune in and elsewhere or go right to nationalreview.com click the podcast tab, find all the fine NR audio, listen. Leave reviews where possible, help us find new audience members. We also invite you to join us@patreon patreon.com Politicalbeats support us. Help the show stay ad free as it has been for a while. There's entry level support for saying good job guys and some voting privileges mid level for early access to our shows and them at a higher audio quality. And our upper level best friends get early access, higher audio quality. Monthly exclusive content episodes, remastered shows, playlists and more. All of it@patreon.com politicalbeats and by the time this show is live, also sitting right there is our recent hour long plus interview with the legendary Nick Lowe. And our Patreon people get a little bit of extra content plus exclusive access to the video portion of the interview. That's September's exclusive content episode. You can find it and join us@patreon.com politicalbeats now the part of the program where we say thank you specifically to some of our great Patreon supporters. New new people, Jeff Richter. Thank you, Florida man. Thank you. Invalid name. Thank you. I just read them people. Justin Thornton. Thank. Thank you. And to some of our long standing supporters at Patreon, we say thank you to Jim Sellars, Zach Bruckmiller, Anthony John Martyr, Michael Shore, Tim Keith, Colin Rusk, Randy Deese, Mo Lane, Todd Perkins, Pete and Jack A. Teobaldi. Thank you for Supporting us@patreon.com PoliticalBeats My name is Scott Bertram. Find me on X at Scott Bertram, my tag team partner. Standing by as always, Jeff Blair. Jeff, how are you?
- [02:33]
Jeff Blair
Can't say as I'm thrilled, Scott. I mean, listen, once upon a time, long ago in the mists, the dark mists of time, a tall, shady man offered me a simple choice between death and dismemberment. And I chose. I chose the latter because, you know, I figured it would be more slow at least. And the time has come to collect and I'm really not looking forward to it.
- [02:57]
Scott Bertram
Well, that's happening today. Find Jeff over on X at Esoteric cd. Our guest on today's program is the features editor at Reason magazine. He also writes the Substack Cocktails with Suderman, which is about making Better cocktails at home. And you can find him on X at Peter Suderman, which is appropriate because it is Peter Suderman. Peter, thanks so much for joining us.
- [03:23]
Peter Suderman
Thank you so much for having me.
- [03:25]
Scott Bertram
We'll talk about our band in just a moment, but allow our guest to take the floor. Peter, tell us a bit more about what you do at Reason. Tell us about the substack where people can find it, all that good stuff.
- [03:36]
Peter Suderman
So I've worked at Reason for over a decade at this point, and I am the features editor there, which means that a big part of my job is helping to edit and shape the stories that appear in our feature. Well, these are the big meaty three to five thousand word reported stories. And so I get to work with a lot of our writers on helping to conceive of those stories, helping to figure out how they're going to report them out, what shape and structure they should take, and you know, just sort of generally kind of being a partner slash somebody a sounding board for a lot of our writers. And then in addition to that, I also, A little bit. Right. So I just let, I think of that Michael Keaton line in Spotlight where like he's running, you know, they're like high end investigating and like somebody refers to him as the boss or something. He's like, no, no, no, just a player coach. Just right, like that's all right. Just somebody's there to help with them, you know, help you. You've got. I'm very lucky I get to work with such great writers. They always inspire and challenge me and keep me interested. And I just, you know, a lot of my job is sort of having conversations. What are you doing? How are you doing this? Oh, you maybe do it a little bit like this or maybe here's another way to think about it. So it's sort of helping. Helping really smart, really creative, really great writers and investigative reporters do their job. It's very gratifying. And then in. I also write movie reviews for a reason. And I am a panelist on the Reason Roundtable podcast, which is a libertarian review of the news with my colleagues Kathryn Mangu Ward, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch. It comes out every Monday evening and we talk about the stuff that's in the news and we talk about it from a libertarian perspective. So that's what I do at Reason. And then I also write a substack, as you said. It's called Cocktails with Suderman. It's about home bartending. So I really love making craft cocktails at home. I like Having them at bars as well. But at bar bars, they can be quite expensive. They can also seem really complicated. But what I try to show people in this newsletter every week is how those cocktails actually work. How even when they seem very complicated, very obscure, very opaque, they're, oh, these are seven ingredients. I've never heard of any of these. What in the world was that? I'm going to break those cocktails down for you and show you how in almost all cases, they derive from just a couple of very simple, very simple historic cocktail forms. And how even if you can't make exactly, exactly this thing at home, you can get surprisingly close, often using pretty basic, pretty standard ingredients. It's also just sort of like a way to sort of talk people through the theory of cocktails and some of the history and the sort of how they're constructed, how they're constructed, you know, sort of focusing on these recurring forms. And in that way, I often think of cocktails as being a lot like pop music because, well, of course, you know, there's thousands, tens of thousands, millions of songs out there, and yet so many of them are just these three and a half, four minute ditties that bas basically work on the. On. On similar structures that they've had all of these different elements hung on them in that same structure. You know, there are all these songs that are. That are top 40 hits that sound really different. You think, oh man, these are totally. And then, and then you see how they work. Like, you could almost play them right next to each other and you're like, oh, it's the same thing, except here it's a keyboard part instead of a guitar part. Here they've layered on, you know, some brass sounds rather than, you know, xylophones or whatever it is.
- [06:53]
Scott Bertram
Right.
- [06:54]
Peter Suderman
It's the same. It's the same kind of thing where, where everybody in pop music is working from the same set of standard forms. Almost everybody. And then they're figuring out how to dress those up. Cocktails are actually pretty similar. And so I'm very lucky to have a dedicated, delightful audience that wants to read me talking about how to put these things together and then talking about specific recipes and how to think about them every single week.
- [07:21]
Jeff Blair
Jeff mentioned now talking about a band that wasn't working from a standard playbook. But anyway, Scott, what were you.
- [07:27]
Peter Suderman
And yeah, we'll talk about this. This is actually something I want. I want to bring this back. This. I laid this.
- [07:31]
Jeff Blair
Interesting ideas. Yeah. All right, Scott.
- [07:35]
Scott Bertram
I was just saying we got to find a band for Catherine, because we've talked to everyone else on the Reason.
- [07:41]
Jeff Blair
Podcast, the reason round we had Nick and Matt. Yeah. All right now, I guess, Scott, you could do it, but I think I might as well. The next question is, I'm going to invite you in the guest that we have this week. It's the first time I've ever done this, guys. It's a hallmark the first time I've ever done this. But the guest that we have for Beats this week is none other than Washington D.C. area's own dismemberment Plan.
- [08:17]
Unknown
Fades above you? You move and you see gray you know it's all good in our hearts? Lead you onwards and now signs will point you on your way? You're just up and directions it's endless? It's mapless. No compass, no North Star.
- [08:58]
Jeff Blair
And before we proceed any further, I really would like to know, Peter, why do you love the Dismemberment Plan? What do they mean to you? How did you find them? And why should other people care about them?
- [09:09]
Peter Suderman
I love the Dismemberment Plan. I'll just say, it's not just that I love them. They are one of my two favorite bands along with Nine Inch Nails. I love the Dismemberment Plan because they capture everything that I love about pop music in a single act. So on the one hand, they just rock. And a lot of their songs are these really driving, charging, sort of like crazy almost manic kind of punk rock derived or sort of post hardcore derived songs. But they're not just a rock band, they're also a dance mix.
- [09:43]
Unknown
So put your hands in the air and when I care a song let's only care Just drive away when we can care. We're going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back, back. We're going back and forth and back and forth.
- [10:18]
Peter Suderman
And when you go to their shows, there are people dancing and there's in fact a very funny track on one of their early albums called Doing the Standing still that is making fun of all of the hipster indie rock kids who show up to a show by a, you know, by a band that is. That is quite danceable, that like infuses go go beats and disco and, you know, in excess into their. That kind of thing, into their music. And they're just standing there with their arms crossing, maybe tapping their toes and looking real, you know, sort of serious. Like we've all been to that show, especially in the late 90s, you know, in the sort of post David Foster Wallace era of, like, smarty pants indie rock nerds who were, like, just above it all. And that's the other thing I like about this band. They're really clever. Yeah. Story of all of our lives, right? Like, so many of us in this particular age group. Right. Like, that's the other thing that I like about them is these guys are literary and they have a sense of humor.
- [11:11]
Unknown
Pop open the third bottle of bubbly.
- [11:13]
Jeff Blair
Yeah.
- [11:13]
Unknown
And I take that bottle of champagne, go into the kitchen, stand in front of the kitchen window, and I take all my clothes off, take that bottle of champagne, I pour it on my head, feel a cascade through my hair and across my chest. And the phone rings and it's my mother. And she says, hi, honey. How's Bost? There all alone on New Year's Eve, buck naked, drenched in champagne, looking at a bunch of strangers, looking at them, looking at me, looking at them. And I say, I'll find Mom. How's Washington? Hey, I stopped Washington this morning and was waxing up white midday or night, and I slept on it every time. The ice of Boston is muddy and reflects the light every day or night.
- [12:13]
Peter Suderman
And there is. Their sense of humor aligns with my own so perfectly because it is never about jokes, really. Okay, there's some jokes, but mostly it's about looking at the world askew and finding it a little bit, like, distancing in some ways, a little bit alienating, but also sort of bizarrely amusing all the time. And there's this tension between being a little bit alienated by the world, but also just sort of finding it kind of a delight that you can smile and make fun of. And there aren't many other bands that capture that, and the ones that do tend to be a little bit more depressive, I think, you know, Radiohead, especially in the kind of late 90s era, gets some of that, but it's Radiohead's just a little darker, a little bit more sort of down and mopey. And Dismemberment Plan has some of those elements, but ultimately they always resolve it. You know, life's pretty delightful and worth living, even if it's bizarre and, like, kind of sad sometimes.
- [13:10]
Jeff Blair
Okay, that made me laugh so hard because, okay, I think I'm going to go second here because I think I'll also do the introduction as well. I feel like I'm obligated to as the D.C. kid. Right? But you made me laugh with that Radiohead comparison, Peter, because I'm about to tell you guys a long and boring personal story. But I think of the dignity, the somber dignity of Radiohead. Oh, all the woes and cares of the world. But they just couldn't seem to make a joke if their gun was pointed to their heads. These guys know how to laugh at themselves and the ironic distance. They can laugh at the world in the same way that I, in fact, you know, as an older person, have learned to laugh at the silliness and the ironic, carnival esque tragedy of things, whether they happen in your real life or when they happen in the world. So I definitely appreciate that reference. And the reason I'm opening with such a sort of a personal note here is that I feel very strange about the band that we are covering on this episode of Political Beats. The Dismemberment Plan is a band that is almost entirely, no, actually literally musically entirely brand new to me for this show. Peter mentioned, like I said several years ago, in fact, that it was like these two bands they thought he would love to do with. One of them was Death Cab for Cutie, but he's like, no, I really want to do is the Dismemberment Plan.
- [14:29]
Peter Suderman
Which just just to interrupt really briefly, the very best show that I ever saw in my life was in 2000, 2002, right before death Cab for Cutie really broke out with Transatlanticism and with the Postal Service stuff. And it was a co headlining tour between Death Cab and the Dismemberment Plan called the Death and Dismemberment Tour. And it was incredible.
- [14:53]
Jeff Blair
It's wonderful. That would have been a great build to a scene, I think. Actually the only cool thing I saw around that time that was like up and coming was probably very early Arcade Fire. But I completely missed out on this band and I'm now like, as we're doing this episode, kind of musing upon an alternate universion, alternate universe version of my own self. There's really no excuse for me not having known and treasured the music and really kind of the band personality of Dismemberment Plan for so many obvious reasons. Once we get to the music, you'll understand why this is precisely in my wheelhouse musically and precisely not in Scott's. We're gonna talk about some of those. Well, we're talking about some of those early albums and all that like dissonance and I'm just like, I'm into it and I know he'll hate it.
- [15:42]
Unknown
Head to toe Rayon don't light a match we look good and we're starting from scratch Going to a place that Never existed and probably never will yeah oh, blue eyes basement on a throw down autonomous zone with in the lights and we piling up alone to leave your contacts at home and leave your party at the Tonight we'll even the score well, tonight we meet in and when we dance well, tonight we meet him when we cry well, tonight we meet in.
- [16:20]
Jeff Blair
But the thing is, is that I would have loved this group and I completely missed out on them. The second reason that's ridiculous is that they're from the Washington D.C. area. And so too am I. You know, everybody thinks of me as a Chicago Gu now. I was born and raised in Potomac, Maryland, Montgomery county, you know. Right. They were from Fairfax. I mean, and this was that There was a D.C. music scene. I was born in 1980, he was b 1972, if you take his own word on a solo album. So that means he's eight years older than me. That means that he would have been getting into the DC hardcore scene, things like Fugazi and such. And he connected to that. And that was something that because of a trick of chronology for me, I was completely tuned out of because what was happening to me in like 95, just as they were beginning as a band, Well, I was be. You know, was undertaking that kind of classic rock snootish. I'm diving only into reissued CDs from bands from the 60s and 70s period of my life, which really more or less carried me outside of Radiohead and Blur and Arcade Fire, a couple of other ones that would break through. I had no knowledge of what the actual American musical scene was like at the time. I missed out on like, basically the best of my generation, other than the few I mentioned, really, simply because I was too busy listening to old Genesis bootlegs. So it. It makes me feel embarrassed, but it also, in a wonderful way it gives me the opportunity at this. Today is my 44th birthday, as it turns out.
- [17:53]
Peter Suderman
Hey, Happy birthday.
- [17:55]
Jeff Blair
Right? Happy birthday. We're taping on September 17th. And so like now coming back to this, I'm thrilled to hear this music that is completely new to me, that, that there are a lot of other people out there who might have grown up with like. And if they were indie dorks the way I was. And I completely just went right over my head. But in a weird way, I listen to albums like, you know, Changes and Emergency and I. And even. Even the weirdness of like, exclamation point, which we're about to talk about. And I am, am back suddenly at the age of 19, 18 years old there's a version of me that was like crying and moping around to this instead of Tender by Blur or, you know, some Radiohead kid, a track or something like.
- [19:10]
Unknown
Now I notice the street lamp sum the ghosts are graffiti they couldn't cry the race of blank face stairs on the subway as people go home the parks lay empty like my unmade bed Streets saw a silent like lifeless telephone and this is where I live but it never felt less at home so I'm not unsympathetic I see why you left there's no one to know there's nothing to do the city's been dead since you've been gone.
- [19:56]
Jeff Blair
There'S an alternate version of my life that was the world's biggest fan of this memberment plan. And although I'm not now, of course, because they're frankly only about 2 months old to me at this point, I'm really impressed with this group and you can just see the arc of their career and also the way it was sort of. We'll get to this at the end. Sadly cut off in a. In a way that, you know, they broke up of their own accord. But then the lead singer, Travis Morrison, probably should have had a solo career. He deserved to have one at least. And so we'll talk about that at the end. But this is just another one of those great Political Beats episodes where some of you. There's. Somebody mentioned it to me the other day, he says, like, I've never even heard of this band. This will be the first time for a show. And I was like, I think you're really going to enjoy this because it was a wonderful discovery for me and also kind of a reminder that there were so many other paths I could have and probably should have gone down when I was in college and late high school and, you know, that era that I just missed out of. And it'll fill you with just a twinge of regret it.
- [21:21]
Unknown
Could have been good it could have been something special it may have had real potential it never could show it could have been great it could have been something alright but we never did keep it that time so what do you know? I'll get up at 5am I so don't need those dreams that I used to have.
- [22:02]
Peter Suderman
This is your Sliding Doors this is where, yes, we're going to be.
- [22:06]
Jeff Blair
Oh my gosh, what a reference. Peter. That film in particular. Yeah, the alternate. What could have Been. How it takes. Yeah, Sliding Doors there. Scott.
- [22:14]
Peter Suderman
Now I know this is a multiverse episode of Political Beats in Which we're going to, like, take the other path for Jeff's life here.
- [22:21]
Scott Bertram
We're going.
- [22:22]
Jeff Blair
We're going into the spider verse here. Peter, this is gonna be amazing. All right, Scott. So, I mean, I. This. I would assume, since. Since we're both into this, this probably isn' a fat pitch for you to hit over the Wall.
- [22:33]
Scott Bertram
It's not, of course, but you know what? I always find something to enjoy because all these bands that we bring to the table are high quality. And this one, I know people who love Dismemberment Plan. It was sort of adjacent to me throughout college life. My roommate was a fan. Peter mentioned the Death and Dismemberment tour. I know he went to one of those shows. On the Death and Dismemberment tour at the college radio station. We played some songs. I am almost certain I reviewed Change for the Radio Station when it was released, and I spent the past few days racking my brain to remember, A, if I liked it or not back then, and then B, what song we might have been playing off it on the station as one of the current new songs. And I can't remember either. So all my takes are fresh this time around. Yeah, it's a band that, as I listen, I hear things that make me say voice. Yeah, this is a band that would. Would certainly be in Jeff's wheelhouse. I was on a long road trip a couple weekends ago and essentially listened to the entire canon. It's not that long. Right. As you'll see as we go through today. And thinking as I'm driving about what this band sounds like, who they remind me of, not to pigeonhole them, but to, you know, as someone relatively new to describe them. And I thought this kind of sounds. This kind of sounds a little like Pavement, and Jeff loves that. And I hear a little like Modest Mouse. And I was trying to figure out there's a third band that's needed to sort of complete that picture.
- [24:13]
Jeff Blair
I know what it is, but you're not familiar with them.
- [24:15]
Scott Bertram
Well, my revelation, I think, this morning is one of the strengths of Dismemberment Plan is that third band always changes, and they're good enough and literate enough in the musical world to be able to play in a number of different styles and take influences from a number of different bands and artists and make it their own. Back to Peter's comparison to the Cocktail. That recipe always changes with that one, with what that third band is. And I'll be referencing a lot of different bands that I hear in particular songs as we go through these albums. And so I. I think when I got down to it, I think that's one of the strength that they have, really an ace rhythm section, too. I love the interplay, especially after the first album when the drummer is replaced. You have, I think, a better drummer. Enter the picture. And then you have this great interplay between bass and drums and rhythm and percussion on a lot of these albums. And then the strength really is that third band to complete the picture of what the dismemberment plan is, is changing, changing all the time. They're able to work in all these references, all these influences on different songs, and they get better at that even as they go along. There's a couple of just really tremendous tracks that I've played a number of times since. Since being introduced to these albums a few weeks ago. And it's not necessarily my cup of tea, but as I said, there are really good things to note. And you guys have the passion and the love, and I'll sort of come from an alternate angle, which, you know, it's not necessarily something that I choose or seek out, but there's still fun things to find for the long nights.
- [26:03]
Unknown
When you found anew Is all that I never knew was there for the cold eye and the warm embrace now for the righteous vibe that I need like the air I breathe yeah There are times when you think you've got my body.
- [26:47]
Jeff Blair
Tell you right now, that's probably going to be something that I'm going to start choosing from here on out, because, again, it's new to me. And it's not only new to me, but it clicked. And again, again, this is just one of the joys of the show now, before we get underway, you know, with the first album, I figured it falls to me to do the introduction to explain who the heck these guys are. And remember, they were growing up in my backyard. I'm in Montgomery County. I'm right near Potomac River. If you know what a map looks like, you know where the Potomac river is. That's where I live. On the other side, the cool side, on the crappy side in Virginia, where the losers live. They were in Fairfax county and kind of southeastern or southwestern Fairfax County. So they weren't even in the hip part of Fairfax. They weren't even in Tyson's Corner. They weren't going to dj. Now they're going to like some. Some, you know, bumble, you know, shoot place. I. I'm actually sure. Can you tell for the first time, reliving my Regional rivalries. They're all coming back to me like, I'm 16 again. Very few people grow up in the D.C. area, which is why immediately, like, something clicked with me. These guys, I had no idea that they were locals. And you hear sometimes in their lyrics, someone lyric, he writes in a song about, like, he's watching the Michael Laughlin group in the morning, and I'm just laughing. It was just like. That was what I was doing in the morning as well.
- [27:59]
Peter Suderman
There's literally a song on their first album called 13th and Euclid, which is a cross street in an area of D.C. which at the time was very, very part of town. It was a part of town that a lot of people wouldn't go to, but also near where if you were going to punk rock shows, you probably were in that area pretty regularly.
- [28:23]
Jeff Blair
And that's what I'm about to get to in a second. So these guys go. They're born. You know, they're from about a decade earlier than us got. So the early 70s is when they're born. So they're coming up in the late 80s. And what is current in the musical scene in Northern Virginia, in the D.C. area, to the extent that we even have a scene, there's two things. There's the black scene, which is like, go go music. Like, really, really good beats. And then the white scene, it's punk. It's hardcore punk, too. Kind of almost the east coast answer to LA hardcore with the SST and Black Flag. Well, here we had Minor Threat and then we also had the sort of the afterbirth of Minor Threat. You had Fugazi. And I can hear, hear Fugazi all over the early music of this band.
- [29:08]
Scott Bertram
That's that band that I can't figure out. Right?
- [29:11]
Jeff Blair
No, actually.
- [29:12]
Scott Bertram
Oh, okay.
- [29:13]
Jeff Blair
Well, we're gonna get there. We're gonna get there, too. But anyways, let's just introduce him by name. The most important guy you're gonna have to remember is Travis Morrison. He's the vocalist, he plays guitar. He's also the primary songwriter. And I. I don't know about the music per se, but certainly the lyricist. Then you got Eric Axelson on bass. And what's important to understand about the way he plays bass is that half, if not more of the time on particularly the music you're going to love, he's not playing a typical electric bass. He's playing bass keyboard, all right? Messing around with these very bizarre low notes in the registers of a keyboard that are bass lines. And it's kind of Think Ray Manzarek on. Instead of, you know, lsd, it's Ray Manzarek on Ketamine. It's a fascinating sound. And then you have two drummers. You have. First of all, they had the first guy, Steve Cummings, who was good on the first album, but then they got Joe Easley and that guy is a magnificent technician. And then finally Jason Ketto on, I guess, their sort of lead guitar. But this is not a band that really has lead guitar in any way that we would properly understand it. It's a second guitar is the way to think about it. And of course he contributed to the songwriting. But all you need to know is these are Northern Virginia, D.C. area kids. And what are they influenced by? Well, they're influenced by the D.C. area scene. And of course, all the music, you know, that Travis Morrison is listening to, which is the same kind of pop rock stuff, Scott, that you or I or Peter, you were listening to. But their primary influen. This is where I was going. This is what shocks me because I never see it mentioned in any accounts of this band. But I grew up on not only DC hardcore, but also LA hardcore and post Parkour, post punk. And everything about the first two albums by the Dismemberment Plan screams Minutemen.
- [31:10]
Unknown
It spot on symbol for my.
- [31:43]
Jeff Blair
Are you guys familiar with the Minute Men?
- [31:46]
Peter Suderman
Somewhat. I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan, but certainly I went through a brief Minutemen phase. I don't know, probably 15, 20 years ago when I was in my.
- [31:53]
Jeff Blair
I. I've been in a 20 year long minute Men phase. And this is another one of those White Whale bands that I dream of doing. They're Los Angeles, Southern California, hard post rock. Hard post, you say post hardcore, but what they were really known as is math rock. That was the joke that the critics called them, which is that their. Their rhythms were so tricky and precise and twitchy and their songs were so compact and angular, orthogonal and brief. And the bass lines, the way the bass interacted with the drums was just so hyperactive that it. It was almost impossible to settle on a rhythm. And it sounded like chaos, but it sounded not like, you know, sort of like Iggy and the Stooges punk chaos, but some sort of scientifically calculated chaos whipped up by a mad scientist in a lab that kind of very jazz.
- [32:40]
Peter Suderman
Influenced in that respect. Jazz influence.
- [32:43]
Scott Bertram
Very.
- [32:43]
Peter Suderman
A lot of odd time signatures that switch around a lot and try to keep you off balance. Sort of like it feels like you're. You should be dancing to it. But also Maybe like you can't possibly because there's. There's not an underlying beach.
- [33:08]
Scott Bertram
My heart.
- [33:09]
Unknown
Is true but my sight is erratic My mind is filled with a symphony of static and nothing is dramatic unless you make it be.
- [33:24]
Jeff Blair
So.
- [33:28]
Unknown
I'm getting better at the small stuff.
- [33:37]
Jeff Blair
Absolutely. So this is music that in a lot of ways, although there's a lot of beautiful guitar and melodic textures in the early days at least, is entirely dependent upon the rhythm section because it is just so metrically irregular and driven by like, you know, like you have strange bass runs and things like that. And again, it boggles my mind that I did brief search on online and see what people were saying about this band. What was Pitchfork saying? Those morons. And it seems like none. These people did their musical history because the Minutemen had a direct influence on bands like Minor Threat and Fugazi and the DC hardcore scene. There is just no question that there was a deep, deep musical influence between those two. And you see it seep upwards into the music. A Dismemberment Plan. And I just again, like, why do people not realize this? And I wonder if I'm out on a limb again because I guarantee you I have this fear. I'd ask Travis Morrison is like, you guys totally love Double Nickels on the dime. And he'd be like, who are the minute Man? But no, it sounds like that. And that brings us to the first album they did a single which is kind of like their little CDEP single. Doesn't matter. The best songs have been re recorded anyway for the debut album. And the debut album is a weird tough pill to swallow right on down to its title. The first Dismemberment Plan album is literally unpronounceable. It's called Exclamation Point. It's literally just the Ino Bang Bam. You know, like it's that. That punctuation symbol. That's the name of their debut album. I think from now on we'll just call it either Exclamation Point or maybe how do you guys wanna. How do you guys want to. Well, there's, you know, the first one.
- [35:20]
Peter Suderman
There's this somewhat famous is not quite right. But there is a cult band that sort of seems to have derived from some of the same influences as. As Dismemb Plan and maybe even been influenced by them. And the name of the band is Exclamation Points. And the way you're supposed to pronounce it is Chick. Chick. Chick.
- [35:39]
Scott Bertram
Yes.
- [35:39]
Peter Suderman
And so we could call this album Chick. Just the one Chick. Like chk. With no. With no vowel in there?
- [35:48]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, no, no, no. Kind of like one of those, you know, South African click languages. Right. You know, like. Exactly.
- [35:53]
Peter Suderman
Chick. Chick. Chick.
- [35:54]
Jeff Blair
All right, well, so what do you think of Chick? The first and rather disjunctive dismemberment plan album. Scott, I know this is your favorite, so I'll let you go third. Why don't you start, Peter?
- [36:06]
Peter Suderman
Well. Oh, I want to hear why this is Scott's favorite. This is. So this is their first joke. Wait. Oh, okay. Okay. All right. So this is their first album. And it's rough. It's just rough in all ways. The songwriting, the recording in particular. I suspect listeners to your show are sort of aware of even like nationally released on labels that people, you know sort of know offhand. Right. Like albums in the 1990s, if they were. If you weren't a. A band with a studio. Studio, record deal, who could afford to go spend weeks in a recording studio? The. The album recordings back then were just so much sort of crappier. I don't know another way to say it. They were so much more amateurish. Right. Because these were often just done in somebody's basement somewhere. You have a friend. Oh, this person has an eight track and two microphones that one of which is, like, borrowed from the rec center or the local mega church. And red and. No, it's red. It's just the whole, like you're just kind of trying to get stuff on tape. And that's the other thing, is that this is still in the era where this almost certainly would have been recorded direct to tape rather than digitally. And then, you know, it actually just had tracks layered and layered over it. And so part of what I enjoy about this album, but might turn off new listeners, is that this sounds like a lot of the post punk album albums that my friends made. And I mean, when I say it sounds like it, I mean, as in.
- [37:30]
Jeff Blair
They played in their garage.
- [37:32]
Peter Suderman
Yeah. Music was a big part of my life when I was a teenager in the 1990s. School was a sort of a mess for me, but I spent a huge amount of time playing music with my. With my friends, playing shows, organizing and doing a lot of recording. I had a little four track myself. I had some friends with some better setups. Towards the very end of that, some people started to get into sort of more digital recording and all that. But like, even still, this was like, this album to me sounds like all of the recordings that we made. All of the things that, like, remind me of being 15 or 17 years old in its sort of ambitious amateurishness. And that's the way I would just sort of capture this album, is that on the one hand, it is very clearly a recording by folks who didn't have a big recording budget or access to a super professional recording studio, and who are also quite obviously very young, I mean, in their early twenties. On the other hand, this album is incredibly ambitious and it looks better, I think, in retrospect, after you've heard what it leads to and when you've heard their next three albums in particular, you can come back to this and see, oh, the seeds of what they were building toward were there all the time.
- [38:57]
Unknown
Soon to be exquaker Cat without his bars Being without a stinger Fighting nature's laws soon to be X Quaker that's just how it goes that's when I saw red Cause it was everywhere and I got kicked again and picked up by the hair that's when I saw the tears.
- [39:28]
Peter Suderman
And the other. The other thing that makes this album, I think, better in retrospect, is these songs, like I said, they sound a little janky on the recording, but if you see them play these songs live, especially in the context of their later work, they sound great live these days. And in particular, there's a song, the fourth track, okay, Jokes over, which is almost always their final song that they play on any given night. I don't know exactly when that started. I think I saw the dismemberment plan for the first time. It would have been either 2000 or 2001. And they, of course, were playing shows all throughout the late 90s that I didn't get to go to. So I don't know exactly when that started happening, but that is their closer almost every night. And they take that song and it's already a pretty fast, pretty big build song that goes and really sort of explodes at the end.
- [40:20]
Unknown
So tell me the truth and before I get mad Was I the best.
- [40:24]
Peter Suderman
Lover you ever had?
- [40:26]
Unknown
Give me it straight doesn't it keep you up at night? If you're such a victim Then go call the cops but you certainly look good when you were on top and if I get the blame then I get the credit to A2A tow.
- [40:58]
Jeff Blair
But.
- [40:58]
Peter Suderman
They take this song and they stretch it out and they make this song, this sort of, you know, a show closing epic that sometimes will. I won't even say sometimes will frequently kind of not stop in the middle, but just sort of like stop moving through the. The. The elements of the song. And what they will do is they will just sort of vamp in the background while Travis Morrison, the band's singer, turns the song into something else. And it's always something that is totally incongruous that doesn't make sense as part of a Dismemberment Plan show. So I specifically remember at the Death and Dismemberment concert that I saw back in 2002 in Louisville, Kentucky, this was 2002. What was on the radio back then? Back that Ass Up. And so this song becomes, for several bars in the middle of it, when they're playing it, at the very end of the show, it becomes Back that Ass Up. And Travis Morrison is just out there rapping through the middle of this. And you're like, oh. And it's really funny. And it's also a way to show the audience that Travis Morrison is influenced by top 40, by rap, by, like, bubblegum pop, by all of this stuff that. Especially in the 90s. I mean, I think people forget how siloed music fandom was back then. It wasn't just that there were the rockists and the pop listeners, but there were the people who were like, no, I only listen to angular post hardcore from the east coast. Will never listen to an la, Right? Like, just like this super specific Peter.
- [42:32]
Jeff Blair
There was an entire subgenre of music nerd who said, I only listen to in an Airplane over the Sea. Like, the only album that's even worth hearing is Neutral Milk Hotel. So, yes, I remember the era well.
- [42:44]
Peter Suderman
And so the idea that somebody who was making music for, like, pasty, nerdy white teenage guys or guys in their early 20s, you know, who almost certainly had, like, very kind of narrow and specific ideas about what hard hardcore and punk and post hardcore should be. And he was like, no, we're going to mix in some top 40 here. When I saw the Dismemberment Plan played just recently on a reunion Tour at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. they closed out with this song. And Travis Morrison takes a moment to turn it into Pink Pony Club by Chappelle Roan. I will never pronounce that name correctly, but, like, the big pop star of the moment. And it's so funny every time he does it, like bringing something in that just shouldn't be here, but he makes it work and it's. And I think that the thing that I want to sort of emphasize from that is the Dismemberment Plan. You know, we've talked about their influences, but a lot of their influences aren't just post punk and they aren't even DC Go Go or dance music. There's a huge amount of top 40 bubblegum pop stuff as well as hip hop that makes its way into their songs that is like you almost don't notice it, but it's so clear that Morrison's tastes were always so w and so varied in a way that I think probably a lot of his listeners weren't, at least at first. So this is one of the things I personally love about the band was that I watched, I saw the Plan play many times between 2000 and I guess actually just a week or two.
- [44:17]
Jeff Blair
Ago for the most recent 2000 and 2024.
- [44:21]
Peter Suderman
Many aside from a local band or two that I grew up with and was just sort of like friends with, they're the band that I've seen play live the most number of times, probably about 15 over the years. And seeing them, seeing this band that I loved and adored play these sort of turn their own work into respectful and funny homages to music that I wasn't necessarily interested in. Seeing them talk about this stuff and seeing how it clearly was informing their own style really helped to change my mind and open my mind to a lot of types of music that 16 year old me would absolutely have scowled at and just been like, oh no, I don't listen to this. That I would never. Right. I just. I would never listen. That's stuff that's on the radio at TGI Fridays. Right? Like, that's not. No, thank you. Right. And Morrison's openness to these other musical forms and his understanding that actually it's all great, you can just throw it all in a blender and make something wonderful out of all of it. Morrison specifically was a big influence on sort of my musical taste and my openness to listening to things that wouldn't necessarily have appealed to cranky punk rock. 15 year old Peter Scott.
- [45:40]
Jeff Blair
Do you want to offer what I imagine will be some fascinatingly scabperous thoughts here before I give you my long detailed thesis about this weird debut?
- [45:49]
Scott Bertram
Well, actually, some of my thoughts echo some of Peter's thoughts, which might mean I'm on the right path on okay, jokes over the one note that I wrote and why I imagine that it is a better live song is this is one of the songs in the first album where I feel like the drumming is, you know, fine, adequate, but it really could have used the kick of, of. Of Joe Easley, who would come in next, or just, you know, any, any drummer that was going to give Them a little bit better beat there. And so I can understand that being a much better live song. I look across this first album and much like Peter said, there are little hints and little suggestions of why this was going to be a different kind of band and the way they were. They were working in different influences. That first song on the album, Survey says, begins with very abrasive verse. The verses throughout the song are very abrasive, but then cuts to this very quite melodic chorus and there's this sort of shouting, singing trade off between verse and chorus and you see that they have the ability to be something more melodic and to write these songs that actually have big hooks. In the midst of being this kind of, I guess I'll say, kind of thrashy, almost emo esque band. Morrison himself on this album seems to be trying out out different voices, different vocal approaches and that would continue. But I think more so here on this first album than anything to come. You've got on Soon To Be X Quaker the beginnings of some of the sonic experimentation that they'd have on future albums. You have these chimes and hand claps. Not par for the course for a band like Dismemberment Plan perhaps. I think my favorite song on here is it if I don't write that has these clearly these terse, tense, coiled verses that. That unfurls into this big expansive chorus. And it really makes me feel like that's one of the few places here where they sort of hit the mark and go get what they're grasping for. That's a complete statement if I don't write of what this band is trying to do, I think on the album and what they would figure out a little bit more on the next album.
- [48:17]
Unknown
Out the window to the alley Join the sidewalk crowd and disappear Catch the last train to Marseille there's not much more to discuss there's you and me but there's no us Some you just get out of the way I'm not sure where I'm going to go what? Yeah, I don't like that. I'm okay.
- [48:58]
Jeff Blair
Yeah.
- [48:59]
Scott Bertram
And a few things in here that really don't work. I. I don't like. Fantastic. I don't like I'm going to buy you a gun. It's slower but not necessarily more interesting. They try to. I mean, it's a groove band in many ways, it's a rhythm band in many ways and it just doesn't work there. They try to sell it, but it's not enough to sort of carry that particular song. But My. My takeaway from this first album is they're, they're, they're as. As Peter sort of said, they are influenced and Morrison is influenced by a lot of different things from a lot of different places. And they have no problem just sort of plucking them and placing them in, in these songs and finding out what works, works. And that would very soon come together in a better way than that it did on this first album.
- [50:03]
Unknown
Impossible Line.
- [50:24]
Jeff Blair
Okay, so I'm. I'm actually pretty fascinated by this record. Even though I think by any objective standard it's not a great album. It's not a good album, maybe even arguably, because what it is. And again, I.
- [50:36]
Peter Suderman
Well, it's rough.
- [50:38]
Jeff Blair
I come to this really analytically. Okay, so I guess a person who's fresh to the music. First time babe in the woods. I just take it all chronologically and I try to do certain things. I listen to a band, I listen. I know me where they're from, which is where I'm from. I know what they were probably listening to. And having a decent sense of Travis Morrison, he seems like he's probably listening to a lot of the same stuff I'm into as well. I can get a good sense of that. But then you also have to remember what 1995 and pop rock America was like. He uses. This is an indie group on an indie label. So think like, who. Who are the people who have made it big for them? It's Pavement on Matador over, you know, with Slanted and enchanted back in 92, crooked rain in 94. All right, that's when they're about to break into the mainstream. Steve Malmus with his slack toned voice. You talk about another band who I just hear reams and reams of sort of mutual. Not mutual, actually. I don't really know if they were listening to Dismemberment Plan, but I can tell you that Dismemberment Plan was listening to Pavement. And you're going to hear it even more so on the next record. But, you know, that's the era they're in. So this is a small record recorded on the cheap in like, like a simple studio that apparently they're like crammed into like a 4x10 box. This is not high gauge recording. So if everything sounds a little bit shambolic, I don't mind that every, you know, truly great sort of punk, new wave alt rock band had one of these eras anyway. So I don't mind the fact that the drummer's time is a little bit stiff. What I'M mind is that, like, the first half of this album is genuinely terrible. Okay, that's. That's my big problem with exclamation point or chick, whatever we're gonna call it. All right. First half of this album is so bad that I actually thought when I first put it on, we booked the show, I was like, oh, gosh, this could be. This is gonna be a real rough ride for me.
- [52:32]
Scott Bertram
So you kind of felt like me for. For a minute.
- [52:34]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, I'm sure. Sure, right? I was like, I shouldn't have signed on for this one before doing a little more research, but. And it's almost kind of funny.
- [52:43]
Peter Suderman
It evolves, you know, it not only.
- [52:45]
Jeff Blair
Evolves, it evolves literally in the middle of the album. Like, this is the sound of a band actually. Sort of almost. I wish I could know. How could I ever know? I'm not a super fan. But if it sounds like they just decided to get all their worst material out of the way in the first four or five songs, it's like the second song on this record is something called, like, what was it? The Things that Matter or something like that. It's probably the worst thing they ever recorded. All right? And the first song on the record isn't much better. Small Stuff is not good. And then all of a sudden it hits, okay, Jokes over, which is the one that you already talked about, Peter. And then I remember in my notes, I remember thinking myself, okay, now this is a song. I think this probably sound better live because there's something about the drums. But then all of a sudden, so many of the rest of these tracks begin to become interesting in that experimental, non pop, emphatically non pop, art rock, you know, post. You know, hardcore post. I think of it all as postpartum, frankly. That is what grabs me. You know, it's a song, a smallest song on the record in some ways, but it's called Soon To Be Ex Quaker. That begins with these weird shingly chimily percussion. I don't know what they are. I think they come from the drummer. I don't know that. They could be keys, though, perhaps. So maybe they're from their bassist. But it's such a weirdly disorienting sound that in. In some ways it's the first moment where they capture the tone of who they are going to try to be in the studio, which is find strange harmonics compositionally, the way dismemberment plans chords. Their music is going to emerge, which honestly fascinates me. This is the part of the band that gets me is that they are so. They, like, almost. It almost seems like they're trying to write a pop song. And then they take every chord and turn its guts inside out and make the change just one tick weirder, right? And. And so it shouldn't work, but yet it all hangs together both through conviction and performance and through craft. And so these songs are just so much left of the dial for what was otherwise coming out during that era that I get fascinated by them. I first hear that on Soon To Be Ex Quaker, but I also hear that Scott Stole My Thunder. I hear it on if I Don't Write and, you know, the other ones, there's. I'm embarrassed to say that I really enjoy a song that's called Onward Fat Girl. But I really. It's such a dumb, almost fratty, like, sarcastic chant. And there's a part of me is like, is he being sincere? Like Onward Fat Girl. I don't know if it's being mean or it's being sincere or not, but it was one of the weirder ear worms that. That. That got stuck in my head like RFK jr's brain worm, you know? And I think it might have died in there because I'm still listening to it now.
- [55:41]
Unknown
Just let the other.
- [56:02]
Jeff Blair
And then the last thing I want to say is that there's this song on this one that actually really impressed me. And it said to me, okay, I can see where this band is going. And it's the last track on the album. It's this thing called Rusty. And it's this long, kind of slow kind of ground out. It's Rusty. He has that sound of a wonderful kind of mutually spiraling guitars. But what impresses me the most about it is that it spends like a full 3 minutes, 2 and a half, 40 minutes, 2 minutes, 40 seconds or something like that, just playing instrumentally until he finally ends on the lyrics, all right? And the lyrics are just like a really kind of an angry bleat about, you know. You know. You know, with that yearning chorus where he just gets really raucous and then all of a sudden goes up into the. The high whale. And then stun stops cold and dead.
- [56:51]
Unknown
Now I'm face down in the yard I'm feeling shaky and pale My nails encrusted and brown My big experiment failed the swing set swings in the back the chains are rusty and old the crossbar creaks as it bends the seat is splintering cold way na.
- [57:38]
Jeff Blair
That to me suggests a self possession instead of like, this is A statement as a song and a confidence that was going to come back in their later albums. But this to me of course is like the Baby Photographs version of Dismemberment Plan. And although I know it's weird there, it's just. You can see that there's. There are at least three or four songs here that really do stand out to me. And I guess if I don't write, although I just passed over it because Scott said it, that to me is just. It's one of those things where the melody and the chord structure are so like non repetitive. There's always like something new unfolding from it that it feels like one of those fractals, like those fractal screensavers where it just keeps on diving in and like, oh, here's another part, here's another part, here's another part. Oh, back to the other part again, really well assembled off centered guitar, alt rock and you know, at the best that's what you get on chick or exclamation point. But this, this, this is nowhere near where the peak of Dismemberment Plan was going to be. And that I guess brings us to the second album, which is called I'm 99% convinced they ripped this Off. It's called the Dismemberment Plan is Terrified Now. Peter, do you know the album I'm thinking they ripped it off from? Do you Scout?
- [58:57]
Peter Suderman
Don't think I know the album.
- [58:58]
Scott Bertram
I. It was rattling around my head and I never, it never, I never figured it out. I know it's in there somewhere. Tell me.
- [59:07]
Jeff Blair
And this is totally a Travis Morrison thing. You talk about the music that he listens to that doesn't show up in the band's music they're totally listening to. De La Soul is 1993. De la Soul.
- [59:16]
Peter Suderman
Oh yeah, you're right.
- [59:18]
Jeff Blair
De La Soul. Get the joke. De La Soul is dead and Dismemberment Plan is terrified. And so that's their take on that. And here' the funny thing, there's at least one song here that is just manifestly superior to everything on the first album and clearly a bridge to the third. But I actually think this record is worse than the debut album I wanted.
- [59:38]
Peter Suderman
Whoa.
- [59:40]
Jeff Blair
I think it's, I think it's actually in some ways a step down. But hey know, hey, I'm the noob who doesn't know anything about anything. What do you guys think?
- [59:47]
Unknown
Pop open a bottle of bubbly. Yeah. Here's to another goddam. And outside, 2 million drunk Bostonians are getting Ready to sing Auld Lang Syne out of tune I sit there in my easy chair Looking at the clouds Orange with celebration no wonder if you're out there hey. The ice of Boston is muddy that reflects no light and take foreign I slip on it every time.
- [60:41]
Peter Suderman
I really like this album, but I will say it took me a little while to come around to it when I first started listening to this many, many years ago because I had heard Emergency and I first. Emergency and I is the album that followed from this. But over the years I have come to really love this album. Album. I mean, the first five. The first six tracks, I would say on this are all just like fantastic expressions of the. Just of. Of what is at least one of. And maybe the core idea that this band captures, which is incredibly a kind of abrasive DC like DC specific post punk in the style of Fugazi. But maybe even more than that. Shudder to think. This sort of like highly rhythmic. A little bit rough by that.
- [61:28]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, of that.
- [61:30]
Peter Suderman
But also. But also catchy and danceable in a way that even Fugazi, as much as they were sort of pulling go Go influences, as much as Shout out to the Thing has those choruses that you can, you know, sort of snap your fingers to like catchy and hooky and. And not just catchy and hooky. I will say one more thing. These are the first six songs here are all verging on novelty songs. And the Dismemberment Plan does this a lot. Like there's like almost like a Monty Python comedy album type of musical gimmick or gag to a bunch of their best songs, which we will. We can talk about I think even more with Emergency and I. But a song like the Ice of Boston is this, like. Is a funny story. That is a goofball funny story. And it's kind of literary and kind of satirical. It makes. Travis Morrison is making fun of himself and his type. But it's also a great catchy, fun song. It's one of their best tracks Live. I should probably just talk about the. The live aspect of this because until this tour they're. The gag with this song, whenever they play it live has. Has been. They put it towards the end of the. Of their set list and everybody in the crowd gets on stage. Or maybe not Quite everybody, but 2 3rd. The audience is all everybody who can't get on stage.
- [62:51]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, I've seen these. I've seen this on YouTube and you.
- [62:54]
Peter Suderman
Just get this like it all. It will come at the. Near the end of the. Of the set list, usually before the encore. And it's just the. This moment of release and celebration when the whole audience or the vast majority of the people in the crowd climb on to the stage and they're singing into the microphone and they're swaying and everybody's up there together. And you. I mean, this is a noisy punk rock band with a lot of songs that are frankly about, I don't know, post adolescent early life kind of depression and aimlessness and ennui me. But you have never seen bigger, happier, goofier smiles on a crowd of indie rock dorks than you have when, when everybody's on stage singing the Ice of Boston together. And it's just such a joyous expression of, I don't know, coming together and listening to great music and sort of finding something in. In a piece of art and just like a. A niche, a little piece of niche pop art that everybody kind of looks and says, yep, I get that. I know what that's about. I feel that. And we're all like. You can all experience it together. And the Ice of Austin is the best of those songs, though. Do the Standing still comes very close. But all of these songs are kind of earnest, ironic punk rock dance songs that are tweaking their listeners that are just making fun a little bit of the people who like this, but in a way that it's designed not to make fun of you so you feel bad, but to make fun of you so you feel like, you know what? I probably don't need to be that much of a stick in the mud. I'm going to enjoy this. That's what I love about this album is this attitude of. This celebratory attitude of like, we're going to do this, we're going to take this very seriously. Because they. They clearly did take their music quite seriously. It's not just a. They're not a joke band. At the same time, they're also. They. They. They believe that this should be fun rather than angry.
- [64:55]
Jeff Blair
They.
- [64:55]
Peter Suderman
That it should be joyful rather than cantankerous. It's a little cantankerous, but joyful rather than just sort of relentlessly depressive or sad. And that was such a contrast to so much of the angry, often quite good punk rock and post punk and noise punk and post hardcore and all of the sort of surrounding genres that we were getting especially out of kind of East coast, late 90s punk in D.C. and New York and maybe even a little bit out in Kentucky. It's just such a contrast and the fact that they're able to do that and to pull it off, I think very well those songs are. The rhythms and the choruses in those songs are incredible. Like, you just sort of. You want to start moving. You can't help but sing along, even if you're not a big lyrics guy. Like, I'm not. I'm much more of a. Sort of. Just like, I listen to music and I often don't even know what my favorite bands are singing about. But here you can't help but. But have those little. Those. Those little phrases, those little. Get hooked into your brain.
- [65:58]
Scott Bertram
Right?
- [66:00]
Unknown
100 million kids all dancing and suspending animation and the feeling's all right we'll be standing still until the morning light yeah Standing still the end of standing still the end Standing still the end Standing still I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Oh, my aching head.
- [66:38]
Peter Suderman
And there's a way in which. In which I think you see Travis Morrison's prowess not just as a. As a songwriter, but just as a writer, as somebody who is able to craft phrases and say them in a particular way that gets them lodged into your brain and makes you smile every time you hear them. Right? And the Academy Award for. Right. Like the Academy. I mean, just. Just go listen to that's when the Party Started or Academy Award or do the standing still and try not to kind of grin. Try not to be amused.
- [67:09]
Jeff Blair
It's.
- [67:10]
Peter Suderman
There's. These songs are so funny while also kind of rocking.
- [67:15]
Jeff Blair
Peter, Peter, Peter Boy I love you.
- [67:17]
Unknown
But hey woke up at 3am with the radio on that Gladys Knight and the Pip song on about she'd rather live in his world with him Than live in her own world alone. And I laid there, head spinning, trying to fall asleep and I thought to myself, oh, Gladys, girl, I love you but oh, get alive. Hey, I stopped Boston's money and reflects no life it day or night I slip on it every time hey, eat myself Boston swim party and reflect the light Meditate or night and slip on it at a red time.
- [68:13]
Peter Suderman
Yes, exactly.
- [68:15]
Scott Bertram
I. I want to jump in because.
- [68:17]
Jeff Blair
Wait, the way he delivers that line in particular is just glorious. Yeah.
- [68:21]
Scott Bertram
Peter mentioned a couple things that are just totally on point with things. I know, which again, makes me feel really good because he's a. He's a huge fan and I'm new, but so the Ice of Boston. I mentioned this road trip that I was on, and the Ice of Boston is the first song that I felt I really connected with. And it's. It's Odd. And it's different from anything on the first album. The way that there's this. This monologue story in between. In between the choruses on the Ice of Boston. But this great. It is interesting stories, references to Jonathan Richmond and Gladys Knight and Midnight Train to Georgia, which Jeff just referenced there too. And taking a nude champagne bath and all this fun stuff, funny stuff. What stuck out to me is this is 1997 and this is years before Craig Finn and the Hold Steady would be a band. And yet it's very close. And I didn't know about the story that Peter told about people joining on stage for the Ice of Boston. But that also correlates to the Hold Steady. If you've been. Well, if you were at a Hold Steady show, they don't do this anymore. Cause the shows got too big and the crowds got a little too touchy feely. But for a long time, the final song that they'd play at shows was Killer Parties from the first Hold Steady record. And they'd invite people on stage during Killer parties to sing together and have this communal experience. And I. I was at a show, it was New Year's Eve 2006 in Chicago where they did this. And it's exactly the same feeling that Peter described. It's one of the reasons why that show is the greatest live show I've ever attended. And I've made that point a few times on the show. But it's the same. It's weird how you have those correlations between the bands and even between the songs. I definitely felt that while listening to the Ice of Boston and something else you mentioned way at the beginning of that description. I felt bad about writing this down and I feel less so now. Kind of how it's fun and funny and they sort of twist things around. So I wrote down, I think it's on Academy Award, but it's in a few places. I don't mean this as a shot, but there are points in which Morrison delivers his vocals. The best way I describe it is. It's the way that. It's the way that Weird Al would deliver these kinds.
- [70:44]
Jeff Blair
I was about to say Weird Al. Oh my God.
- [70:48]
Scott Bertram
It's the way.
- [70:49]
Jeff Blair
Comparisons too, but it's.
- [70:50]
Scott Bertram
It's the way that Weird Al would deliver those vocals in a pastiche of how much he loves this genre of music. It's just like you remember the song.
- [71:00]
Jeff Blair
Albuquerque, you know, from one.
- [71:03]
Peter Suderman
That's it.
- [71:04]
Jeff Blair
That. Okay, that's Travis Morrison's voice too, man. I swear to God, when he's Doing the Sprechtem stuff. When he's talking over it like that, he sounds like Weird Al for all the world. And I. It's just some people have a tonality that makes him sound like that when they speak. It's not his fault. That's what it is.
- [71:20]
Unknown
Taking all attention away. After your performance, there's no one left to nominate. Dangling yourself from the cross. But here's your Hammer Prize and the Academy Award for embarrassing melodrama goes to you. So get on up there and give us a speech.
- [71:56]
Scott Bertram
So I noticed that too. And then the last thing I'll say before I pass it off to Jeff is the other song that I really like from this record, which I would be more on Peter's side than Jeff's side. I think this is a clear step forward in a number of ways. I think this Is the Life, which ironically, is also the name of a Weird Al song. But this Is the Life. That's the song, that's the single, quote unquote. That's the place where people can get entry into this band and album. And it also is this. This step forward I was talking about. You have this electronic beep that's keeping time and yet around it is this very melodic structure. It's a very nice hooky way to enter into dismemberment plan on this record. And again, I think it's the most fully formed song on is Terrified. This is where every. Every part of what they are trying to do comes together and it's the. I think it's the best song. Ice of Boston maybe too. But this Is the Life is a great song.
- [73:04]
Unknown
No matter what they say. This is the line. No matter what they do. You know that this is See it Through.
- [73:32]
Jeff Blair
D. You know what's very telling is that the first thing that song made me think of is another band that you. We haven't done on this show, but, you know I'm a mega fan of is xtc. Peter, are you. Are you familiar with XTC that.
- [73:44]
Peter Suderman
I wouldn't say I'm a hardcore fan, but yes, definitely familiar.
- [73:47]
Jeff Blair
Well, I mean, that sounds for all the world. Kind of their ladder studio boundary or like Oranges, Oranges and Lemons era sort of Andy Partridge melody line. It just sounds like it was written the same way. Partridge would string together a set of chords and like a melody run. And it has. Of course, they've always had that sort of nervous, angular twitch that XTC has. But, you know, just to go back for a second to the album itself, I. I know it's strange. I see why. It's a quote progression forward. They sound much more confident as an ensemble. Right. But I guess I go on the moments, the ones that grab me. And of course, the one I. You know, we already. We've already talked about, you know, the. The Ice of Austin. That's a great song. And. And the whole mon. And we're actually neglecting the fact that it's not just the funny, like, little story, the narrative that Travis tells. It's the fact that it has a killer chorus. It's a really good chorus. It's like a. You can hear that on the radio. Actually. If it weren't for the fact that he was getting Newton dancing himself in champagne and calling his mom, you'd want to hear that on the radio because it's a really clever tune. All right. The one that actually grabs me is the starter. It's called Tonight, We Mean It. And that that kind of is me is Peak Minute Men style Dismemberment Plan. And again, I'm referring to a band that nobod else here is maybe, for all I know, they aren't familiar with, but my God, it sounds for all the world like something that could have caused, you know, could have come off of, like, buzz or Howl under the Influence of Heat. You know, that 84 EP, same kind of angular approach, same kind of nervous twitch energy. And then on the completely different angle, here's the one that I think most of you guys don't like and wouldn't have time for, but actually grabs me. And that is that incredibly long track album concluder, Respect Is Due, which is like 12 and a half minutes. And it's very not Dismemberment Plan in a way, because it's long and it's slow and it's loping and it does repeat all its choruses builds up to this, like, big final climax on the last few minutes, which is really impressive. But this, to all the World, sounds like the most Pavement influenced song that they would ever record. He sings exactly like Stephen Malchus doing something like Half a canyon off of Wowee Zowie, which would have been 1996. So, like, chronologically, this kind of of does add up, but that long, slow, vaguely stoned sort of slacker jam. But also even the message respect is due, but you're not going to get it for me basically anytime soon. The long drone is one of those things you have to be in the mood for, but I find myself surprised that some of the other really and angular things that you'd have expected to impress me. They sort of fall apart here. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't like. That's when the party started, which has these horribly atonal harmony vocals. And there was a concept they were going for there, but it just doesn't click for me in the slightest. But then I hear this long, shambling 12 and a half minute ramble called Respect Is Due with Morrison singing in his raspiest and horsest weediest voice. And even though it's probably the most uncharacteristic great dismemberment plan song there is, it's still actually one of their great ones.
- [76:54]
Unknown
If I ever would let down the wal that protect me from you I would say respect is due but not in this lifetime if I ever will let me down the walls that protect me from you I would say respect is due but not in this lifetime if I ever were let down your walls that protects me from you I would say respect is due but not in this lifetime so it's interesting that.
- [77:44]
Peter Suderman
You picked out the two closers on both of these first albums because I think every one of their four, they.
- [77:51]
Jeff Blair
Know what they're doing.
- [77:51]
Peter Suderman
Core albums closes with a song that has that more introspective, more drawn. And even if it's not a super long song, they're always sort of coming back to this sort of like distance ironic, but like not actually crazed or manic sensibility in their final song. And. And that's how they sort of treat okay, jokes over live, except it becomes much more manic as well. But it becomes this sort of. You just get lost in it. And that's, that's what happens at the end of this album. But it's also what happens at the end of Emergency and I and Change. And their albums are sequenced really, really well. There's like a clear act break, you know, two clear act fakes, I should say, right? This is a 3x, these are three act structure albums. And while I don't want to say that, you know, nobody thinks about sequencing or any sort of album structure at all these days, we obviously just like, relative to the 1990s, live in a much more singles driven culture. And that's true even for smaller bands and I think, you know, just for maybe younger listeners who were not, you know, in intense music, like purchasing or listening to like parts of their lives in the 1990s. If you were a band that did not expect to get played on the radio or mtv, if that was not part of your plan, you were building that like. Yeah, you were writing songs and you wanted to write songs, of course, you know, that would play on their own at, you know, in live settings, for sure. But the idea was that the thing you were making was an album that was that like, that was the unit of thought, right? Like, how can we build an album here? And at least for so many of these bands, it's much less true now. But you see that really in, in this album, in an emergency in I, which is that these are. These are not just collections of songs. These are albums as complete thoughts and as complete narrative arcs. I feel like in basically every case that have, you know, this sort of opening moment and then you sort of a shift into like. Well, here's where the main action is going to be in a second act. And there's always a sort of big kind of sad finale at the end of the second act, right? Oh, you know, and then it comes out of that and there's a sort of a high point and this moment at the end.
- [80:05]
Jeff Blair
Timeless and close format. Peter.
- [80:08]
Peter Suderman
It's not like they invented it, but they pull it off.
- [80:10]
Jeff Blair
The thing is not like it'll. It's not like it'll ever be improved upon either, is my point. Like, I actually think there's like a. Like a fundamentally satisfying organic structure to that kind of.
- [80:22]
Peter Suderman
And even the Aristotle, it's not even. Forget albums. Forget pop music. This is just 5 paragraph structure, except in album form.
- [80:31]
Jeff Blair
Yes, it is. And there was, you know what. And you could see that they were just on the exact verge of putting it together with Dismemberment Plan is Terrified. And they hadn't done it yet. But you could just, you could sense that this was a band full of possibilities.
- [80:45]
Unknown
At some point, oh, you've gotta come up for air to wipe the rocks and mud and dirt out of your hair. Blind and queasy with the growing sense of despair. You don't know anyone. You look around. Yeah. Trying to find someone, you know. Yeah. Put your hand up in the air, you kind of wave hello. But if they do care all the non letting it show.
- [81:37]
Jeff Blair
Yeah. Well, I love it when a plan comes together, don't you? And by the way, actually reminds me, we haven't even explained to anybody listening why this group is called the Dismemberment Plan. Why such a violent title? What was it with these trends in like 90s, 2000s era bands towards gruesomeness. There was Death Cab for Cutie. There was the Dismemberment Plan. As it turns out, and this had always nagged me. Dismemberment Plan was a band who I'd known by name in the late 90s, even though I never heard their music. But, you know, people would talk about them on the Radiohead message boards and whatnot. I was like, well, that's a violent set. I assume they must be like some sort of hardcore thrash group. Turns out the line comes from Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray comedy. You know, like the. The insurance salesman who keeps bugging him in the beginning of the film. The guy with the glass.
- [82:26]
Scott Bertram
Ned.
- [82:27]
Peter Suderman
Ned Myerson.
- [82:29]
Jeff Blair
Yes, that guy. That guy keeps trying to sell him insurance. Who sells them up. Well, I'll sell it to you on the install installment plan. No, how about on the Dismemberment Plan? Presumably that would be like, if you lose a limb, you get some money or something like that. And I think according to Travis Morrison, he's like, that was just a joke between me and my high school buddies when we were playing together, and that sort of stuck. And so even though the band is not like a hardcore, they were pretty chaotic in their early music, which is probably. It fit better. But when things come together on Emergency C and I, the meaning of the band's name takes on entirely different valences. Because this is like one of those. Those records where you just. You see a band, so you see the elements floating around, and you wonder, will it coalesce into a molecule? Will it become an atom? You know, will it take shape? You know, will life be created? And here's where you actually hear all those pieces falling into their right place. This is where the band comes together. And it's just from the absolute opening seconds of the first track, A Life of Possibilities, they found not only their sound, but in a very real way, they found their lyrical vision. Because this is the first record, despite those funny narratives that, you know, like on the Ice of Boston or Whatnot or Academy Award. Now, this is the moment where I heard this music just for the first time these few months. And I got that cold chill of recognition where I'm like, I don't know what I'd have done if I had been in 1999 or 2000, feeling, like, brokenhearted and glum in college or with all those, you know, those dramas that young teenage kids have. And listening to this instead, it would have sent me off on a different path. A similar path, but a different path. And one that's.
- [84:20]
Peter Suderman
You would have ended up working at Reason instead of National Review.
- [84:23]
Jeff Blair
Basically. Radiohead turns people into National Review People and Radiohead and Blur and then, you know, if you go into dismemberment plan, you end up at reason and making cocktails. But this album is a true shock. You still see some of the bits of who they were, but you see who they were becoming. And I guess we'll get to the end. And I wonder like if there was. There was not. This development wasn't sadly cut short, but this album is practically a miracle. It remains a landmark of the late 90s. And it's an amazing fact that I've only come around to it it recently, but now I see even why that the Pitchfork, you know, love this record. It was what they said it was. It's a remarkable and an emotionally resonant work.
- [85:15]
Unknown
Different people at the very same job. Similar alley, different rats. The trash goes out on a Tuesday now you gotta make a note about that.
- [85:30]
Jeff Blair
Yeah.
- [85:31]
Unknown
This time you wear it out. Yeah. You can't say it, but I know that it's window. You don't know. I know that you're still smarter in the snow.
- [85:54]
Jeff Blair
Peter, you want to start us off on emergency and I. And I know this is one of your favorite records of all time.
- [85:59]
Peter Suderman
This is one of my two favorite albums of all time. It was released on October 26, 1999, just a few days after my 18th birthday. Maybe that's not a coincidence. Maybe you just glom on to the things that like come out right around when you turn 18 and that's. You can't help it. In fact, my other favorite album is.
- [86:22]
Jeff Blair
You'Re a year younger than us, which is shocker, huh?
- [86:26]
Peter Suderman
I am. I am a 1981 kid. So. So 1999, you know, big year.
- [86:32]
Scott Bertram
I was.
- [86:32]
Peter Suderman
It was my first year in college. I was turning 18. Is that like that same weekend that Fight Club came out? Just like a six weeks after Nine Inch Nails is the fragile, like, basically. All right, this was a. This was a big moment for a lot of us. Kind of, you know, elder millennial, Oregon Trail types, right?
- [86:54]
Jeff Blair
In freshman year, it was the Matrix and then followed by Fight Club sophomore year. These were heady days, Peter. Heady days. I have to remember this was the.
- [87:01]
Peter Suderman
Point in time in which I was so. I had obviously seen the Matrix when it came out In March of 1999, at the end of my freshman year, at the end of my senior year of high school. But this was the time when the weekends, when I didn't have something to do, I would go to the $2 second run theater and just watch the Matrix again. So this was like. That was the. That mindset that I was in when this album came out. But I actually didn't hear it until a few months later because, again, just to go back to this period and what you guys certainly remember, but younger listeners might not, is it could be very difficult to access music back then, especially if it was not released by a major studio. You couldn't just go to the mall and Sam Goody and pick up a copy of Emergency and I. Okay, maybe some. Some of the stores had copies, but this was just in no way a given. There were specialty shops that you had to go to. So the way I got this was I had heard about this band. I had had some friends who saw them play in a tiny little coffee shop in the panhandle of Florida, raved about them, just raved and raved and raved. And I was like, okay, okay, I gotta finally. How am I gonna get this? My very first Amazon purchase in early 2000 was of the CD copy of Emergency and I. That became the album that I listened to.
- [88:12]
Jeff Blair
It's a milestone. The first ever Amazon. Yeah.
- [88:16]
Peter Suderman
So this is. So this is like a big turning point in my life in a bunch of ways. And this album, I think, is a big turning point in indie rock and also in online music criticism and the influence of sites like Pitchfork in particular. All of that kind of coincided and came together in this album because this album collapses and synthesizes all of the trends that were happening just below the level of radio, sort of radio rock in the late 1990s. This is punk rock, but also a little bit of noise, but structured in a. In a really poppy, like a really. I mean, these are tight pop songs. Structurally. Every one of these is just about, you know, sort of radio friendly in terms of the. The organization of it. But then all of the sounds in this album, the sound just the. The different acoustic, the different noises that come out of this, that come out of your speakers when you're playing this album are so strange and so un. And even the Dismemberment Plan was never able to quite come back to this set of sounds and produce something like this again. And it just sounded like nothing else you'd ever heard before.
- [89:41]
Unknown
She's wearing too much lipstick tonight Little black dress a little too tight Tries to make small top but it drips with small fight she knows that it's coming it's really all right Nobody here could know how she feels not getting drunk and she hates wearing heels Tries to stand but the room seems to bend Real her planes all keep asking why can't she just steal if she's just fast enough and maybe the broken pieces of her heart we'll stay together and we gyros go can forever yeah, she fast enough and baby we'll broke the pieces of her heart let's live together and gyroscope can spin forever because.
- [90:25]
Peter Suderman
On the one hand, sure, you could hear Pavement and you could hear Fugazi, but you could also hear all of these very odd electronic influences and a kind of epicness to the song structure that was not just sort of free floating. It was also very intimate and very personal. There was a. A little bit of even like. And quite theatrical at times in a way that like, I think this album occasionally echoes a print in that respect and sort of seems to pull from sort of some of his stage Persona and the way that he would use him, his voice and his guitar. But you just get, you. You get. This is my favorite dance punk album of all time. And this is a thing that was happening in the late 1990s that now we just take for granted that, oh, punk rock has dance influences. But back then you had bands like this and the Faint, like this Memory Plan and the Faint and the Rapture, all of whom were, for the very first time trying to get cranky. Hardcore punk rock kids, you know, maybe shake the booties just a little bit, just like you do a little bit more than that standing still at the strip mall.
- [91:49]
Unknown
Second attacks like the force for on the M oh, and it glows Hits me right off it's almost too much to take.
- [91:59]
Peter Suderman
This got right.
- [92:00]
Unknown
Out of the laser Razor thin lines A curve and swerve and triple signs and addressing the knives and attempt to leave it all behind A search of the moment between the seconds we're going to finish just fine that silver thread embedded deep within our spines and I.
- [92:15]
Jeff Blair
Used to be kind of weird about.
- [92:16]
Peter Suderman
This fear of dependency and you see so much of that on this album. And yet it's not just a sort of party dance record at all. It's very moving.
- [92:25]
Jeff Blair
It makes me laugh so much, is that like, there's this effort to get the nerdy, like, you know, art rock kids to start dancing. And these guys tried, maybe didn't quite succeed. It took LCD sound system and them growing up and becoming like, you know, New York City stock brokers. Give me some sense that I could get into it.
- [92:46]
Peter Suderman
LCD absolutely has a. The many of the same influences here. In particular, Talking Heads. I mean, LCD is more Talking Heads driven than these guys are but there's. There's a whole bunch of the sort of early talking heads that you start to hear in particular in this album. I. I think where they're using polyrhythms and synthesizers to create a danceable yet explicitly post punk and punk rock derived sound and beat. And then, but then. And then Morrison's lyrics over all of this, every one of these songs is. Just goes straight for the heart. And if you are like a. Again, I mentioned David Foster Wallace earlier, but like, if you are of the, like the particular generation of. Oh, you're born between about 75 and 84 or so and you, you know, you just like. Oh yeah. You know, there's a smart writer guy who's got a lot of feelings and like looks kind of cool but like definitely kind of awkward and has a lot going on in his head. This is the. This is the album that you should have been listening to. This is album equivalent of. Of a lot of that vibe. And I know. Oh, David Foster Wallace, Toxic masculinity. We're not supposed to like him now. No, he was like a good, really smart writer. Occasionally a little bit too in his own head. And that's actually. That is also. This album is. This album gets at the. The problem of being too in your own head better than any other record I think I have ever listened to.
- [94:12]
Unknown
Nothing's wrong, I'm just fine. I've realized I just don't like jokes. Thinking of. I can't call anyone back. You can tell every time they lean away when you just want to talk. You couldn't buy their interest now. Stolen cars in a heap A naked body on the neighbor's yard when they let you down, down on cue. When you give up way before you even try they know you're gone. You got the jitters.
- [95:05]
Peter Suderman
And it starts off with this absolutely incredible electronic bass and drum sound in that just has this weird sort of like worm like groove that goes through it.
- [95:19]
Jeff Blair
Keyboard base. And I didn't even understand what it was they were doing to get that sound until I saw them playing something live. They do that on this. They certainly do it on the City as well. That's their basis. Just playing on the lower. As I said early in the start of the show. He plays that stuff all in the lower register where you get that weird squash. It almost has like an uncertain tunnel center if you listen closely sometimes. And yeah, that's all.
- [95:41]
Peter Suderman
Keyboard almost sounds like they're blowing out the speaker. Except they're not. It's just super low end. And so you start there in this sort of like weird kind of pre manic place with the opener here. And then the album just moves back and forth throughout that second act between kind of crazy and manic and sort of slower and sadder and a little more depressed, but like trying to figure out what to do it do about it. And then also these bits that are just sort of laugh out loud funny at times. And in particular, you are Invited, which is always a big hit at shows, but is one of the standout tracks here. And it's just one that I. I mentioned novelty songs in the way that a lot of their songs seem like gimmicks in some ways earlier. And you are Invited is. It's. It's absolutely a gimmick, but it's much more than just a gimmick.
- [96:39]
Jeff Blair
It's so moving.
- [96:40]
Peter Suderman
It's incredibly moving. And it's this song about being. It's a song about a person who is sad and lonely. And it gets an invited that just says, you're invited.
- [96:50]
Unknown
I got it in the mail one morning. There was no return address, just my name in gold leaf on the front. There was no time, location. There was really no info at all. No date, no place, no, it's arm, no R, else vp but it said, you are invited by anyone to do anything. You are invited for all time.
- [97:41]
Peter Suderman
An invitation in the mail that just says you're invited. I He's able.
- [97:44]
Jeff Blair
Realizes fit in.
- [97:45]
Peter Suderman
He still doesn't fit in.
- [97:46]
Jeff Blair
He goes into his fancy party and he doesn't fit in there. So he goes into his old ex girlfriend's party and of course it's awkward and so he goes home and he just feels like, well, what the hell am I gonna do? He just sees an old sad person crying on the porch. Why? There's some party. He wasn't invited to it. So what does he do? He said, hey, maybe you can have better luck with this than I did. You're invited. May. May it serve you well. There's a sweetness and a sadness to that song behind the sort of like kind of jagged and fascinating arrangement. The final verse where it's just him playing the acoustic guitar and you expect it like, roar back into the band, but no, it just ends there. He hands the letter to the sad fellow, says, you're invited. Okay. I mean, I.
- [98:27]
Peter Suderman
And structurally, that's how they do everything. Not everything, but so much. I mean, just even their whole albums is they save the big bits for 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through and then we'll end on these notes, these sort of introspective, pensive notes. And it's a fascinating twist on the. Oh, you're supposed to have hit your. Your biggest, you know, grand finale at the very end. They. They put that at the act break.
- [98:49]
Unknown
Stopped to see what his deal was. I didn't catch much through the sobs. Something about a party. And he didn't go. I thought about it for a second with the invite in my hands. I threw it down at his feet and I said, you are invited by anyone to do anything. You are invited for all time. You are so needed if you really want to go. You are invited for time. Time for all time.
- [99:51]
Peter Suderman
And then they pull out them and they're like, you know, what are we going to do?
- [99:54]
Jeff Blair
Why? This is why when I'm talking to you about, like, this should have been the alternate version of my life, I understand exactly why this one clicked for, like, all the sort of bed sit, room musos like me who were out there back then. And if I had only heard it, God knows what would have happened. There's such an intelligence to these songs. That first song that you mentioned, I just got to dwell for a second on a life of pasta possibilities because, you know, think about you. What is he? He's 25. And this is like it. I'd have been 19. You're 19 when this thing comes out. What is that song about? Song is about saying, like, oh, yeah, like, you think you're young and you could just do anything you want, but guess what? You spend too long doing all that. When you come back around, nobody's gonna remember you, care about you. You will have burned your bridges and closed your doors. The life of possibilities that you think you're leading are also decisions that you're making. And a lot of them could be poor and irrevoc. And it just begins. Remember that weird synth bass and he's singing the high false. Best vocal tone he's ever had on any of the records, in my opinion. That is just an instant splash of sobriety. But it's like a. It's like, you know, you're being splashed with it, but it's crystal clear because this is such a bracing approach, a melody, a structure and a message. And it was the first time in any other songs. As I was talking about the comic narratives earlier this album, the narrative, the actual lyrical meanings of those songs, for me, as a music listener, I always gravitate towards the music first as opposed to the words. And here was the first time where it just Hit me instantly that they were singing about much more important matters than the sort of ironically distanced or silly things. And why the heck is the album called Emergency and I? Because there's, like 17 different personal emergencies that seem to be happening on this record in the songs.
- [102:09]
Unknown
And challenges you to stay. Well, then if it's a life I find a barrel I teach that you gotta live well don't be surprised when they don't remember for you.
- [102:42]
Jeff Blair
Scott will scoff, I'm sure. But the one record this reminded me the most of, in the way that it really does seem to sort of crystallize its era, actually, is Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend, which is another album by a guy who just hadn't gotten it together, really, over the first two albums, but then found the moment. And of course, it was, you know, I mean, what happened to, you know, Travis Morrison? His dad died, and his girlfriend broke up with him in the middle of the sessions. Not quite as bad as what Matthew Sweet had to deal with. And that's, by the way, why Girlfriend is, I'd say, a better album. But this is a fantastic album. And things crystallized for him as a writer, I'm. I believe, at least simply because they were coming together in his life. And that's what. That's why you get songs like, you know, a Life of Possibilities. That's why you get songs like Gyroscope, which is a song clearly about a relationship that is hanging on and wobbling dangerously and almost falling apart. And it's so beautifully depicted in the meter of the song itself, I had to count it. I think it's either in 13 or 15. I can't remember. I think it's 15 if I check my notes. But the thing won't keep a regular meter precisely because it's a musical depiction, just as the lyrics are depicting a relationship where, like, oh, are we orbiting around one another? Or is this all just gonna fall apart and collapse and wobble over and fall down Maybe the broken pieces of.
- [104:03]
Unknown
His heart will stay together the pain and gyroscope can spin forever yeah, if he's fasting out Then maybe the broken pieces of his heart will stay together and the gyroscope can spin forever Ye happiness is such hard work Harder every day and if you could even know but once you be that Jackie about it Pieces of your heart will stay together but something I see lately makes me doubt.
- [104:58]
Jeff Blair
I mean, they are working on a musical and emotional levels in conjunction with one another on this record for the first time in a way that they had not done earlier. So that's why just as the noob emergency eye blows me away and I have a lot more to say about it. But Scott, do you wanna. You wanna throw in some. Did you finally find something you could dick?
- [105:17]
Scott Bertram
Yes. Yes, of course there was. I've said nice things previously.
- [105:23]
Jeff Blair
So much to say about that.
- [105:24]
Scott Bertram
Well, let's start here. I think no one's talked about as far as I remember. What do you want me to say? And that is like a fist pumping sort of anthemic song that I think people who are unfamiliar with the band will get into immediately. And. And I, I, I love. And they do this often too, with they. They build up so much tension in the verses. And then the chorus is this just great relief and. And release. And that's the case with what do you want me to say? That the tension is driven. There's this repeated guitar note over and over and over and over. And Jeff knows. I just saw squeeze and that, that, that single note guitar guitar solo from pulling muscles from Michelle. It's the same sort of thing. It's one note, one note, one note. And you think it would get annoying, but it doesn't. It just sort of leads you to this release of the chorus, which has these then. Then the switches to this like, grinding riff, soaring vocals. That's a great pop rock song. That is one that people can really get into.
- [106:35]
Jeff Blair
I think there was a time when you.
- [106:38]
Unknown
You could make me laugh at will. And you can do it still. Whatever is it for the right reason. Yeah. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? To let you know that I do mean? And what do you want me to say? What do you want me to do to let you know that I do mean that? What do you want me to say? Why do you want to hear. To let you know that I.
- [107:30]
Peter Suderman
That single note. It's not just that it sort of leads you to a release. I mean, it's. It's like it captures the rhythm of hyperventilating, of literally like. Of breathing and so deep and not being able to control it. And it's the same thing. Right? Except that they've got it into. They've taken that and transformed it into a guitar and drum and bass rhythm.
- [107:53]
Scott Bertram
Yes, yes. And Jeff mentioned. Well, I want to back up. I completely understand sort of the personal pull the album has with people who kind of lived through it. And this is the kind of album based on the music, lyrical content that they really live with. You hold it, you share it you love it. You return to it over and over when certain things happen in your life. And we all have those sorts of albums. I mean, one that was released around the same time that I have a very visceral relationship with, that everyone knows who listens is Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker. And a couple years after this, Jeff Benches mentioned Matthew Sweet and Girlfriend. The album that I. Again, just kind of thematically and sort of. Well, thematically and the way that people hold it close. The Shins album from a few years later, shoots Too Narrow, is one that I think sort of played that role for me. I didn't have Emergency and I. I didn't know about it, but everyone has that. That album that sort of fits this role that Emergency and I plays for. For those who held it in real, you know, closely to. To them. The last track on here, Peter, I mentioned earlier, you know, Talking Head stuff back and forth. So I'll be the one that mentioned the last track this time. It grooves that's, you know, remain in Light era Talking Heads. Really funky drums.
- [109:21]
Peter Suderman
Yeah.
- [109:22]
Scott Bertram
There's keyboards kind of jutting in and out, ticking, tick, tick, tick, guitar kind of thing that very much is reminiscent of. Of Talking Talking Heads. I hear that influence a lot. You guys already covered You Are Invited, which is a big highlight. I even at this point, connected to the city. You know, I worked in Chicago, downtown Chicago, for a number of years. And the way he described. And I used to, you know, I worked nights and I worked odd hours, so I'd always be walking around the city. It was basically me and nobody else. On bridges and through the tall buildings and looking. Listening to the city and hearing that sort of synth hum that you guys both mentioned earlier really pulled me back to that place, especially with relationships around that time. And I haven't mentioned a lot of lyrics yet, but on the City, when he says, I see why you left, there's no one to know. There's nothing to do. The city's been dead since you've been gone. And the way he says later, the.
- [110:23]
Jeff Blair
Way he builds up to that line, since you've. You've been gone, it comes out of nowhere. Like, you didn't expect that kind of bellow or that kind of emotional power from like, you know, sarcastic pavement desk talk talker guy, Travis Morrison. And all of a sudden there's just this weirdly, like, very almost nakedly emotional, like, you know, scream.
- [110:44]
Scott Bertram
Yeah.
- [110:44]
Jeff Blair
And, yeah.
- [110:45]
Peter Suderman
You realize that this song where he's. This song he's been, you know, telling you about what it's like to be alone in the city and sort of observe. It's a very observational kind of distant song right up until that point when you realize that all of these observations are covering deep and raw. That a real hurt that's down inside.
- [111:02]
Unknown
Sometimes I stand on the roof at night Watch as something seems to happen somewhere else I feel like the breeze and pick me up and carry me away Hot ends over the iridescent gr. Up and away from the bar fights and neon lights Are out and away with everything that makes me what I.
- [111:28]
Jeff Blair
Am.
- [111:31]
Unknown
So I'm not unsympathetic. I see why you left. There's no one to know there's nothing to do the city's been dead since you've been gone.
- [111:52]
Jeff Blair
And it makes all sense.
- [111:53]
Peter Suderman
That hurt expresses itself is actually through this distance. But then sometimes it just comes out and you can't help it.
- [111:59]
Jeff Blair
It makes all the sense in the world, too, if you know that Washington, D.C. isn't a particularly moody or picturesque city. It's boring as heck, really. So the only reason you'd write about it as a city is, you know, basically because it reminded you of that girl that you lost. That's not actually true, because there's another song on this record.
- [112:16]
Peter Suderman
Washington is beautiful. I will defend my city. I have my city too, buddy. Okay, so you were born there, but I've lived there since 2005, with the exception of a very brief excursion to New York and. But.
- [112:32]
Jeff Blair
We traded. That's literally the year I left. I left in 05 for law school. So I guess you took my slot. So I guess I wasn't thrilled with Washington. You could have it. All right. It's really funny, but there you.
- [112:44]
Peter Suderman
I'll take it. It's a good city.
- [112:45]
Jeff Blair
There are moments there that really do resonate, even for me. There's a song. I think it's the best song on the album. Maybe even. Even better than A life. It's called Spider in the Snow. I just. I have no idea whether the fans love it or whatever. I just found it on the record. And this thing is haunting. It has melotrons. Melotrons really, I guess, are what provide the. The key or the sort of melodic instrument. But the lyrics are just. He's telling a story that was my life. He's like, you know, there's a different scene out you're outside your window. The same vcr, the same cats. He talks about, like, walking up and down K Street. And then, like, I had five friends back the day, and I don't even Remember them now. I don't talk to them. It's like, this is literally my life working at nih, you know, after I graduated from college, you know, at the medical center. And it was just sort of like a. An airless, kind of a pointless period of my life that felt like I was exposed and I didn't know. And that's why I love that. That image actually is of, like, you know, you're obvious and lonely, like a spider in the snow. And you think about it, that is a perfect. Like, what on earth would a spider be doing out of hibernation, just like, on the snow. But I've seen it would happen. Sometimes you'll get a weird spring or very, like, early frost, and then you'll find that in your backyard. And it's just a great analogy for feeling like you are exposed and vulnerable in a place that you aren't. You don't know if you belong, and you certainly don't have any shelter from it. And this is all matched to some of the most beautiful music of their entire career.
- [114:24]
Unknown
In all this way. It's not let go. You can't say But I know that it's in me. You don't know it but I know that your sight this morning is harder than the snow.
- [115:06]
Jeff Blair
Well, it's just like this is an entire album. As I said, it could have been an alternate history of my life in college. And, I mean, again, that's probably why it was perhaps for the best that I missed it. It was weird enough as it was.
- [115:18]
Peter Suderman
So we should probably talk a little bit about the origin of this album because.
- [115:22]
Jeff Blair
Oh, yeah. And all of that.
- [115:25]
Peter Suderman
Yeah, there's. There's an interesting backstory story here, which is that after Is Terrified came out, this band got around. It got some. Got some good press and the dismemberment plan signed to Interscope Records, which was the home of bands like Nine Inch Nails. It was a sort of.
- [115:41]
Jeff Blair
Rubin. Isn't Interscope Rick Rubin? Yeah.
- [115:44]
Peter Suderman
I don't know.
- [115:45]
Scott Bertram
That's Def Jam. American is.
- [115:49]
Jeff Blair
I can't keep these things straight. My memory is all shot.
- [115:51]
Peter Suderman
But they were. But Interscope was known as the artist friendly sort of big label imprints. And they were the place where you would assign some of the weirder acts, but then. And then allow them to be themselves while pushing them into a somewhat more commercial zone at the same time and try to find a, you know, sort of a nice middle ground between, wow, these guys are really weird. And, wow, these guys are really commercial. And they signed and then they recorded this album as part of their Interscope deal. But in the process of this, I don't want to state the timeline too precisely because it's a little fuzzy in my head, but in the process of this, everyone at Interscope or all the people they were working with is what they've said, got fired. There was a huge merger reorganization with the labels and Interscope became not. It still existed, but it became not the same label without the same interests.
- [116:47]
Jeff Blair
It was the beginning of the multi corporate conglomerate world. You know, who bought them was this thing, Seagrams, which, which is funny because Seagrams, to me as a kid it was always like they sell ginger ale.
- [116:56]
Scott Bertram
And wine, apparently, and wine coolers, right.
- [116:59]
Jeff Blair
But apparently they're like a giant, also European, also whiskey, right. But a giant multinational that now owns record labels in the late 90s. And they decided they had no room for Dismemberment plan in there in their place.
- [117:11]
Peter Suderman
This was, this was after they had recorded the album and there was a period of time during which the album was recorded. They were touring and playing these songs. And this was during this time, I should say the, the band was really building a, a reputation as a live band. And they, in addition to having this album in particular, is widely regarded as a great album. The band has a huge part of the Dismemberment planet's reputation is just that their live shows are consistently incredible. I, like I said I've seen them probably something like 15 times and I've never seen them play anything less than an absolutely delightful show. And so they're building this reputation. They were playing the songs from this album and they didn't know if they were ever going to be able to release it because the terms of their deal did not let them own the record outright.
- [118:15]
Unknown
Your front porch doing nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all. Yeah, but if I can somehow lose all memory of these things, all this is the first anniversary of your last phone call. I can never think about coffee stands again.
- [118:55]
Peter Suderman
And so this whole long arduous process where they didn't know what was going to happen with the. The album that became their most definitive breakout work because. Because the label reorganization and, and merger was just messing things up. So they did finally get it back and released it on their old, you know, punk rock label, small label Home DeSoto, which since we are, you know, the, the annals of DC punk rock here, we should note, is owned by a former member or the wife of a former member of the band Jawbox, which is one of these post hardcore bands that Made its way around D.C. and this album Emergency and I was recorded by Jay Robbins, who is the guitar player and singer from Jawbox. So their DC connections here go go pretty strong. But this is again, this was supposed to be the album where maybe they were going to get radio play. Maybe they were going to end up on MTV back when that was still a big deal. You know, maybe they were going to finally break out and not just be this indie band that all the true indie kids appreciated. This was the point where maybe they were going to break out and find a bigger audience. They did. They toured with Pearl Jam in Europe for three weeks for a summer. It was like, oh, maybe they were like they were on the cusp and then the, the label, you know, blew up and their album was trapped for a while and it finally came out. But something else happened.
- [120:20]
Jeff Blair
Pearl Jam. I will just have to clear if that Pearl Jam tour happened after the album came out and then I think they, they cite that as their high. That's correct.
- [120:28]
Peter Suderman
That's right. Yeah.
- [120:29]
Jeff Blair
That was a great summer by the thousand. Right? That was the Binaural tour and they were playing in Europe. And of course all the Pearl Jam shows circulate. And I kind of would like to hear some of the Dismemberment Plan shows from the opening act. But yeah, that was afterwards. But yes, this is just. I'm so to interrupt.
- [120:45]
Peter Suderman
No, no, no, no, no, that I, I, I, you should get my, I said I, I was a little confused on the timeline. I appreciate that. But what happened here was they didn't come out and, and become a huge radio band. Instead they became in many ways the biggest of the early aughts indie darlings. And in some ways I, I would make an argument, Jeff, you, you know, Scott, you guys might want to push back here, but I, I would argue that Dismemberment Plan was the first and the most band made by Pitchfork. And Pitchfork was really the vector by which people heard about the Dismemberment Plan because they raved about this album. They raved about the band even before it came out and the album came out and it was, they put it as the top album of 1999, the best album of the year. And this was in the early days of when kind of music blogging online music zines, and in general, and Pitchfork in particular were rising up to take over a lot of the music discovery and criticism function that had previously been filled by other by print magazines, small print magazines, or just specifically by Rolling Stone.
- [121:56]
Jeff Blair
It's amazing how Our minds get overwritten like a palimpsest when it comes to the evolution of the Internet. Because I remember this too. I remember it's so hard to think about this in 2024, but I remember 19. There was no Internet in 1999. 2000 is the first time people started carrying. It was the election crisis. But it's only really after 2001. And yeah, 9, 11 when everyone started blogging and the Internet exploded and the whole sort of like including not just political commentary but music blogging, music. Com. A lot of the sites, people I'm still friends with to this day, they all really took off after that. Sort of very kind of a big curtain fell on the end Internet phase and Pitchfork was there on the spot. They were the best positioned actor for the new revolution. They drove so much of like what like hip people thought about music in that era.
- [122:49]
Peter Suderman
And back then they, they, you know, now we think of them as much as anything as a news site for, for music. But back then they were almost exclusively a reviews site. Some interviews, a little bit.
- [122:58]
Jeff Blair
See I'm so. I don't think of them as a news site. I only think of them as the reviews.
- [123:05]
Peter Suderman
Even before some of the editorial revel. But back then it was that they. It wasn't just that news was not what they were known for. It was. They didn't even do it. What they did was they sorted through the albums and they published three to five record reviews every single weekday. And so if you were a new music junkie, as I suspect all three of us were around that time, and for the, you know, throughout the aughts, if you were a new music junkie, this was before Spotify and Tidal and Apple Music and anything like that. And it was also back when even the file sharing networks, yeah, you can find a lot of stuff. They were kind of sketchy and unreliable. You just didn't know. And there was just so much music. There was so much music. And how did you find out it was. You looked to the one site that reviewed. Okay, not literally everything, but they were re. They were. They were doing the best job of any of these publications. Of just they were doing from a.
- [123:58]
Jeff Blair
Perspective that wasn't corporate. They weren't corporate, they weren't bought by the labels. They would, you know, you know, they would offend people if they had to. It made them feel rebellious. And the thing is, I was just, I was talking about this. It's funny, I guess dismemberment plan is as good an episode as any for me to get My little Pitchfork media rant out. Now I gotta go back and look at those reviews. And you know, for all the media credibility they have and all the cycles that they drove in the industry, I kind of think they were a pox on it all. I think that they very quickly grew too sort of enamored of their own power and huffed their own fumes. And then they became some of the most self indulgent writing and also sort of capricious, nasty and arbitrary and bitchy writing in the face of the music industry. Right as about the. Right as the whole thing was about to come tumbling down anyway.
- [124:54]
Peter Suderman
Unfortunately that doesn't happen anymore with small publications that are on substack, for example. There's no, no audience capture, no sort of people becoming too enamored with their own power.
- [125:05]
Jeff Blair
That's this.
- [125:05]
Peter Suderman
We're. We're beyond that.
- [125:06]
Scott Bertram
We've.
- [125:07]
Peter Suderman
We've solved it. No, it's just the same thing. Except you and I know you're in.
- [125:10]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, Peter, you're trying to admit you're in the pocket of Big Cocktail. We get that you're in the pocket of Seagrams actually, because they're the ones who make all the liqueurs. There you go.
- [125:19]
Peter Suderman
Well, they also Seagrams had a distillery that for a long time was providing some of the best rye whiskey in. In the in North America. Was coming from the old Seagram's distillery.
- [125:31]
Jeff Blair
There you go. But this is such a strange era and it's like 25 years now in the past. Right. But it was when these like nerds originally out of Chicago, I mean, could basically dictate a lot of what was cool or what wasn't cool. And they really helped to make this memorable plan cool.
- [126:02]
Unknown
Every time. When everything I love, everything I hold down has done times. All I ever say now.
- [126:47]
Scott Bertram
And I would.
- [126:47]
Peter Suderman
But I would say the converse of that. The reverse of that is yes, they absolutely helped make Dismemberment Plan cool. Helped people see the dismemberment plan was great and built up the legend of Travis Morrison. And the Dismemberment Plan being this revelation in indie music at the same time because they were so successful at building up Dismemberment Plan and people and well, Dismemberment Plan was never huge. They became a deep cult favorite for a hand handful of really intense fans. Maybe even a worst sort of fans.
- [127:17]
Jeff Blair
Basically the worst sort of like clingy fans.
- [127:21]
Peter Suderman
The very best kind. And I say that because I was one of them, having struck gold by finding the Dismemberment Plan. This sort of general. This like, I don't know, mini era defining band that reflected back on Pitchfork and gave them more power. And so both Pitchfork and Dismemberment Plan in their peak eras, I think are products of each other. And this, of course, will come back and be important again when we get to the first Travis Morrison album. But just hang on to this idea that we're not just talking about Pitchfork because it's contemporaneous, but it also comes into play again.
- [127:56]
Jeff Blair
And I guess that brings us to the next album. And this, okay, there's a little. Little in between thing. They do like a little EP with another group who I'm frankly not Juno. I don't know if you guys know anything about Juno, but there actually are some interesting tracks on this. The one that I really like is called the Dismemberment Planet Juno ep and it's a split ep so they each get two songs. But there's this one little track called Crush. I saw you guys talking about it. I was fascinated by it as well. It's very uncharacteristic for them. It's mostly acoustic, kind of a slow six and a half minute dirge. But I love it. And so I was surprised to hear, because if I like something, I'm usually reliably informed. Scott's not going to like it. But he seemed to like it as well. Scott, what were you. What were you gonna say?
- [128:41]
Scott Bertram
I would. I would bet dollars to donuts that you. You don't know the original song. Correct?
- [128:46]
Jeff Blair
I'm certain I don't.
- [128:47]
Peter Suderman
Wait, you've never heard the original?
- [128:49]
Scott Bertram
No. You hang around. You hang around Jeff enough. You know, there are some things he's just not going to do.
- [128:54]
Jeff Blair
Gaps. Just gaps. Big gaps in my life. Yeah. What happened now?
- [128:57]
Scott Bertram
So this is a song, was it? I think 98. Jennifer Page is the artist and it's one of those. It was like a. I would say like a higher grade. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, that sort of thing. But it had a little more.
- [129:15]
Jeff Blair
So like actually like, like, like, like teen pop.
- [129:17]
Scott Bertram
Yes, is what you said. Yes.
- [129:19]
Peter Suderman
Okay.
- [129:19]
Scott Bertram
But teen pop, that was so much.
- [129:21]
Peter Suderman
Goes to the point I was making about Morrison's vast top 40 influences in.
- [129:25]
Jeff Blair
The way bubblegum syrup, okay.
- [129:28]
Peter Suderman
Enters into, you know, a fugazi, shudder to think type band.
- [129:32]
Scott Bertram
But it's one of.
- [129:33]
Jeff Blair
What happened here? What'd he do?
- [129:35]
Scott Bertram
Well, it's one of those songs that I, you know, like, even I like, like this. That's a pretty good song. Like People have respect for Britney Spears and Toxic, which was a few years later. But that's the same way, like with the. This Jennifer Page song Crush. Like, you know what? I have to grudgingly admit that they sort of hit every. They checked every box on this. It's. It's a good song, but it's a. You know, it's uptempo dancy again kind of. Kind of teen pop top 40 song. And clearly Travis Morrison agreed because this is the song they choose to cover. And they essentially double its length to six minutes. And they turn this, you know, uptempo top 40 teeny song into this very sparse, very dark love song simply because it's presented and arranged in a different way. It's almost a sultry torch ballad of such. I wrote down this is laughing because.
- [130:29]
Jeff Blair
It sounds to me like ryan Adams redoing 1989 as Music Ballad. This is basically the same idea.
- [130:35]
Scott Bertram
What I said is it sounds like Greg Dooley from Afghan Wigs and Twilight singers, the way he picks his covers and sort of turns them around. And now he's the protagonist. Protagonist of those songs. He's the. He's the one who was sort of taking advantage of someone in those songs. That's the way that Crush comes out on this ep. Sort of took the original feel behind it and. And completely twisted it around. And it's really well done.
- [131:03]
Unknown
So let it be why don't we not make a fuss and get crazy over you and me here's what I'll do I'll play loose it's not like we have a date with destiny and it's just some little Crush. Not like a F Every time we touch and it's just some little thing not like everything I do depends on you and it's.
- [132:04]
Jeff Blair
Well, that brings us to, I don't want to say the last album of Dismemberment Plan's original career because there is a. A reunion record. But actually, well, I'm gonna make the. I'm gonna start with my counterintuitive hot take. I don't even know how counterintuitive is among big fans. I think Change is fairly clearly the best Dismemberment Plan album of them all. I think this is the last one. Came out right after 9 11, and then they broke up a couple years later. This is the album that, when I finally heard it, I got to it at the end of my chronological review of this band's career, I felt sad because I was like, why did it end here? Because where they were going on this record seemed like it could go anywhere. This to me is the. The advance upon Emergency and I. And I know a lot of people say, well, Emergency and I is the great dismemberment plan record. And this one's, you know, almost as good. I actually think this one is the peak of their power originally as a band. I'm so impressed by this thing from start to finish. There are at least two or three songs on Emergency 9 that I don't have time for. I don't need eight and a half minutes doesn't really do much for me. I don't really like. I love a magician. I like to conceit of that one, but I don't like the music of it. Every song on this record is amazing and it ends with such a consecutive string of bangers that I guess I'm surprised this wasn't. This doesn't have the same reputation as Emergency and I because I think it deserves it in every respect. And again, I guess I'm going to throw it out to Peter first because, man, I think you and I could probably talk about this one for a while. This one, to me I think it's better. I don't know if you do.
- [133:47]
Unknown
As an arrogant dream storms and from another life I felt the snaps of minds that bind us all to this world I felt such unreal pain and not known what to do it isn't mine I've stayed awake for weeks and slept for the days not one dream I guess you could call it superpowers but no one is going to save the world what I've got and it is a light from.
- [134:35]
Peter Suderman
I don't think it's a better album. I think it's a more polished and more mature album. It is no longer the album of a bunch of early 20something guys trying to figure out what it is that they're doing recording in a basement. They have clearly moved into a space of. They're not old at this point, but there is a kind of maturity here and a kind of real focus. They know there's no moment on this album where you think, oh, they didn't seem quite sure about that. Are they really committing? Do they. They don't know what. No. At every single point on this album they know exactly what they're doing and they. The command of their instruments, of their selves, of their ideas, of their vibe, of their purpose here is really singular. And I think you could maybe argue it's a little bit more so than Emergency and I certainly it's more polished than Emergency and I. But Emergency and I is a better album, I think, because it just has that. It has a kind of spark of the new that remains to me incredibly energizing and enlivening in a way that this album, which is. We figured out what we're. What we exist to do, and now we're gonna do it. And we're gonna do it really well.
- [135:49]
Jeff Blair
There's a lot of. There's a lot of stray fire, a lot of stray sparks and energy coming off of Emergency and I. But there's also some wasted moments and wasted seconds. The focus here is a little bit slight. I hate the word slick. This is assured. But I don't really hear anything on this record. Yeah, and you have.
- [136:07]
Peter Suderman
You have some songs on here that have gone on to become some of their most popular songs. Superpowers and Time Bomb in particular. And once again, you see that about, you know, three quarters of the way, maybe in this case, just a little bit more than three quarters of the way through the album. Instead of the City, which is the sort of anchors the end of the second act and is that sort of sad, deep low point at the end of Emergency, and I hear you have Time Bomb. And it is this song about a. A person who is. Well, who is a time bomb, who is sort of an emotional time bomb and is ticking and waiting to explode. And it is this down point at the end of the middle section here. And you come out of it with the other side. With literally, you're out on the other side. And then you finish the album with, I think one of the most underrated songs by the Dismemberment Plan, which is Ellen and Ben, which is just this cute little short story about a couple that's only together for a few months. And Travis Morrison or whoever, the protagonist of the song the Eye there is just sort of observing them. And it's just this perfect kind of young person in D.C. relationship. You mentioned earlier, this is the song that has that reference to the McLaughlin Group, right? And they're just like. There's a whole section in this song about Travis Morrison going over to see his couple friends. They've only been together for a little while. They didn't like each other at first. They finally found. Became obsessed with each other. And he goes over to their house on a Sunday to return a return or pick up a copy of Alaska and he can barely talk to them because they keep making out while watching the McLaughlin Group. And guys like the late 90s, early aughts young folks on Their way, hoping, trying to find some sort of professional life and place in the world in Washington D.C. that is such a perfect and apt description of what it was like to be in your earlier mid-20s in Washington D.C. in the pre iPhone era.
- [138:37]
Unknown
W. Ellen and Ben. I heard they broke up loudly at a wedding and never saw each other again. It seems kind of weird. They made each other rather feel like they could die, but they couldn't stay. The slightest difference. I'm doing fine. I'm staying busy, hanging with my nephew and trying to keep my eyes on the rise. You know how it goes.
- [139:28]
Jeff Blair
It's like exactly. Without that. Would it. Would it mean anything nearly as much without that amazing musical track? I mean, that's the thing. That's actually them in a much more forceful mode, in a groove dance group for once they have been on the rest of this record. This is again what I mean when I say, like, I'm. I'm impressed in a way I usually am not by his lyrics, by Travis Morrison's lyrics. There are parts of this that do seem eerily like they're recapitulating earlier versions of myself Myself. The thing opens with a song called Sentimental man, which might as well have been me in 2001, where he says, like, yeah, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in any of the limbo stuff, whatever. It's all just this, that or the other thing. But then he also says at the end, I'm an Old Testament kind of guy. I like my coffee black and parole denied Even as I flake on every deal I've ever made with myself before the ink could dry well, I should keep that one inside. And he just, he's talking about, how do you not know I'm a sentimental man? As really so hard to see these things. He's so plaintive. It is so direct. He's saying like, yeah, okay, listen, you may not be able to entirely understand where I'm coming from, but how do you make so many easy assumptions about who I am? Why are you drawing these conclusions?
- [140:44]
Unknown
I'm an own type of guy I like my coffee night yeah Even as I make an Every deal.
- [141:07]
Jeff Blair
I ever.
- [141:08]
Unknown
Made with myself before the ink could dry well, I should keep that one in song. How do you know it is. I couldn't tell you why I feel sudden disaster.
- [141:55]
Jeff Blair
He's in fact laying out a lot of them before you. And again, it's bracing to come back to hear this and just think to myself, I. I know exactly where he was when he was writing this because I remember where I was and that sounds like a presumptuous thing to say. Yeah, I'm just like the writer and the artist. But I. I'd feel less confident about that were it not for the fact that he's so on the nose about this. He writes these very direct lyrics and actually appreciate them because they can be direct without feeling cloying. I think in the earlier years it was jokey songs, but now he's really channeling, you know, actual reflecting on the. The loss and misdirection of his earlier phase and even during this current era. By the way, one. One thing I, I constantly point out is that all the members of the dismemberment plan, despite being in a very successful and well praised indie rock group, not. Not a single one of them quit their day jobs. This isn't a rock group. The way we think of the Rolling Stones or you know, anybody who happens to be on a touring group with David Bowie were rock groups. These are guys who work, you know, side gigs. Travis Morrison ended up after the band working for the Washington Post as like one of their like tech people or something like that. One of their.
- [143:13]
Peter Suderman
He was. If I. The story I have heard and this is not inside. My wife works the Washington Post about no knowledge of the like no inside knowledge of the story I heard was that he was doing ad tech and that he was sort of like back in the early days of, you know, look at like the banners and stuff on web ad sales.
- [143:31]
Jeff Blair
Well that only makes it even more funny because that's not glamorous. It's not like his side gig was like, I'm a prestigious commentator at the Washington Post. He's doing the click the button ad tech kind of stuff.
- [143:41]
Peter Suderman
And that's one of the guys went on to become a schoolteacher. Yeah, like, I don't know if the. There was a reference at that to me is the most inflatable thing of all to. You were a teacher. So maybe he's not anymore. But like, yeah, they all. They all worked real jobs and have worked real jobs. They never. This is sort of why I wanted to talk about the Interscope story. It's because they were on the cusp of. Cusp of maybe becoming big and they never did. They instead they became. They became this other thing which is a cult band that can in fact sell out the 9:30 club instantly just about anytime they want to. 25 years after emergency and I at the same time, like they've got their lives now. They've Some of them have moved away from Washington. There's been marriages, jobs, this whole thing. Right? They are not. These are. This is. This goes back to the days, you know, when like poets and short story writers were accountants or, you know, like lawyers or, you know, or they were janitors or whatever. Like, this was not the full time rock star experience at all. It was very much the thing they did because they loved it.
- [144:47]
Jeff Blair
And the thing is, in all of that, the lack of artifice, the fact that you're just in it for the art, you're in it for the feeling, feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. I guess that's what leads you to lyrics like these, where it's all. It's all just very out there. You know, you have a song like out there. When I see out there in the Open, I think of like Time Bomb, which is the second half of this record. I think is. Is again, this is why I think it's the best dismemberment plan record. The second half is just an emotionally, you know, choreographed roller coaster. But Time Bomb is a roller coaster in itself, in many miniature. Because this is a song about like an old buried, bad emotional relationship, marriage memory that you just sort of keep there, like a good Catholic kid would do. You know, you keep it buried 20ft underground in the backyard. You never revisit it. There's not even a gravestone. And then one day it just comes clawing back out of the dirt and haunts you and wrecks you. And that's the time bomb. That's the fault line. That's the thing where, like, you know, I. You're only you. You are destroyed by that thing that happened in the. That hasn't exploded really yet for you. Well, I.
- [145:57]
Unknown
I am a time bomb and I. But I only live in that one moment in which you die. And it's not right. It's not what I wanted then. But you know, and I know there's no going back.
- [146:16]
Jeff Blair
I.
- [146:19]
Unknown
I am a lost soul and I, I sent out a sicken light up for anyone to see. I cry for help, yeah, I wanted to stay away. The burning, the blinding, the bleaching, the death mask.
- [146:54]
Jeff Blair
Your lyrics there of such emotional relevance that even like, again, I'm just remembering, like, what would I have done at age 21 if I had heard that song? It's probably nothing good. I mean, no, I mean, I probably would have actually just really, really enjoyed it and felt like somebody understood me. But again, these two albums stand apart from the rest of their discography, including the reunion album that we'll talk about briefly later. They feel so emotionally united and mature. And I still prefer this one because the music on it is. There is both diversity and again, they do not waste a second with pointless noise making.
- [147:32]
Scott Bertram
Anyway, Scott, Time Bomb, that's the song, right? Time Bomb's the song and you guys have both mentioned it. I'll be the third to talk about it. That's the song that anchors the second half of the album. That's the song that just where lyrics meet, meet, meet, meet, meet. The music, it builds and builds. As it goes, it becomes more menacing and, you know, I'm a time bomb, I'm a poison, I'm a fault line, I'm a tripwire, I'm a tar pit. All these lines that start the verses throughout the song. I love that one line. I'm a time bomb. I only live in that one moment in which you die. But then at the very end, I'm a lost soul. It's a cry for help like this, this. This odyssey and self reflection comes through at the end. And again just set to a killer musical bass. That, that. That's the song here. I don't think it's better than Emergency and I. So I. I disagree with Jeff. It's a little more reflective in places. It's a little more. It's a little more looking into a mirror, like seeing yourself, what you are as opposed to, or at least in comparison to what you might want to be and sort of being. Being honest about that in a lot of places. I think Superpowers, which is one Peter mentioned earlier that has. I love that great, like buzzy, like be like guitar solo that is featured in Superpowers. I think that the face of the earth, the story there is interesting and fun. It's about his girlfriend being lifted off into space in front of his eyes. And the very end where he sort of says it's not a big deal. It's like, it's been a couple of years. I guess I'm fine about it. It's not like we were married, it was three or four months, you know. He rarely thinks about it, which, if we witness that happening, I think we think about it just about every day of our lives. It's an odd, odd little tale there. But there are some things I don't like quite as much. I don't think Come Home finds its. Its landing spot. I Do you like it?
- [149:50]
Jeff Blair
I do, very much. I think every song here works, actually.
- [149:53]
Scott Bertram
Yeah. But it's a fine album. And the one thing I would Say too. Is that it? Every, every record that they have put out to this point, all four of them, you see them shifting and changing and presenting themselves in different ways and presenting the music in different ways. Different ways. They were kind of shape shifting. There was always a line you could draw through certainly. But I think partially because of the vast kinds of music that Morrison listened to and liked, there was always a stylistic sort of shift from album to album putting on, I want to call it a facade. They weren't trying to fool anyone, but there was something new to present on each album. At On Change, it's a little more settled down. I think it's probably a little more somber in places without. Without losing that sort of pulsing beat, without losing that attention to. To the rib rhythmic aspect of songs. It's a very fine album. I just don't think it's as good as the last one.
- [151:11]
Unknown
Nothing's really different now. It seems like I spend my life in place, which is kind of strange.
- [151:56]
Jeff Blair
I just think there are things on here that. That are both beautifully clever and bitter at the same time. So there's a song on here called Following Through. I have no idea. Well, I don't know. I have no idea what the fans think of it, but I'm actually kind of fascinated by it because it's so overtly beautiful. It's probably the poppiest sounding thing you'll hear from the band. But then if you listen to that lyric, it is the most bitter and almost sort of bloodlessly high handed sort of relationship negotiation you will ever read in a lyric. He's at the end of his rope with somebody and this is a relationship that clearly is being conducted it at arm's length on texts or on the phone or whatever. And the chorus of this, this very happy, cheerful, albeit avant garde ish and art rocky song is I can do it with anyone, anywhere at any time. Don't you forget that's my life and it's gonna be good. Don't you know. Not a promise or a threat or an ultimatum though I can do that too. I'm just telling you I've got this life I've just gotta live. I'm just following through. Which is to say I'm following through on my threat or my ultimatum. What's that? I'm gonna leave you if you don better. I'm going to leave you if you don't give me what I want. Any kind of relationship argument. But that is a very. I love the contrast between these very kind of everybody in the audience Must be listening to that, thinking, oh, this is actually a happy song. No, actually, the lyrics are about the most bitter thing in their discography. And it's the series of lyrics, I think, that. That Travis Morrison didn't follow through on haha in his solo career. That kind of got people. People upset. They wanted more of this. I don't know if he was in the mood for more of this, but here it works. It works so well on Time Bomb. Like on the Other side, Ellen and Ben, the songs that you guys already discussed, I. I will say that, you know, even though the big bomb, the one that made them huge was Emergency and I, this one has a. A melodicness that disguises the same kind. Kind of disquiet that lurks underneath those lyrics. And that's, I guess, why I like it the most of their records.
- [154:09]
Unknown
Well, I dishonor the past being so loose with my time I could stand accused of high crimes in the corner of the den and I could be next on a page about to turn soon Some moving my ass at high noon you heard what I said I could say I hope I'm not misread but that's all right I'm quite okay with losing that fight I can do it anywhere with anyone at any time don't you forget this is my life and it's gonna be gone don't you know not a promise on Thriller an ult I can do those two. I'm just telling you I've got this life I've got to live I'm just following through.
- [155:17]
Jeff Blair
Do we have anything else, by the way, to say or to add before we talk about the strange death? Dismemberment Plan is dead. Actually, we will explain how they broke up.
- [155:29]
Peter Suderman
I would just follow up a little bit on your discussion of Following Through's lyrics and the emotionality there. So many of these songs are about relationships. So many of them are kind of. They have a darkness to them. Even though I would not describe Dismemberment Plan as like an incredibly dark band, but there is this rawness to, you know, sort of like young guy breakup emotion, like girls problems type songs. That reminds me of a band we haven't mentioned here, which is Weezer and in particular of the album Pinker 10.
- [156:00]
Scott Bertram
Yeah.
- [156:01]
Peter Suderman
And the Ang. And Pinkerton in particular is the. You know, is the. There's whiz. There's a complicated band. And. Right. The fans of the later era and the early era. But like, Pinkerton is one of my favorite albums of all time. And for Many of the same reasons that I like that. I like the Dismemberment Plan. But what happened with Pinkerton was the reception to that album was quite difficult. It was not. It didn't go over like the first Weezer album did.
- [156:29]
Jeff Blair
It sent Rivers Cuomo to Harvard. He broke up the band in Weez to college.
- [156:33]
Peter Suderman
Right. So. So what happened with that is that Rivers Cuomo put himself all out there, hard on the sleeve, released what. What I consider and what many of the sort of hardcore sort of early Weezer fans consider one of the great top rock albums of.
- [156:48]
Jeff Blair
Certainly kicked in the teeth by the critics for it never made that.
- [156:52]
Scott Bertram
Wasn't that another one?
- [156:53]
Peter Suderman
There was this sort of sense of, I'm going to pull back and I'm never going to reveal myself again. And. And there is. It's not exactly the same thing that's happened that's going to happen here with Morrison and the Dismemberment Plan because change was well received. Emergency and I was well received. But there's a shift in tone here that suggests a kind of a pulling back from revealing yourself after this album that is a little bit different and does remind me, in a kind of, I don't know, hall of Mirrors way of what happened with Weezer and Pinkerton.
- [157:23]
Jeff Blair
Were you.
- [157:24]
Scott Bertram
I was just. It wasn't Pinkerton, another one that Pitchfork probably destroyed before it had an opportunity to find an audience.
- [157:31]
Jeff Blair
I know what I'm gonna. I'm gonna be honest with you. I actually think Pinkerton was one that Pitchfork rescued.
- [157:35]
Scott Bertram
Okay.
- [157:36]
Jeff Blair
I think. Yeah, that was. That was my recollection, you know. What is that? That was one of the early. Like, hey, this is actually great.
- [157:43]
Scott Bertram
I'm thinking of.
- [157:43]
Jeff Blair
That's kind of.
- [157:44]
Scott Bertram
I'm thinking of Rolling Stone, which named it the worst record of the year. That's what I. Okay, that's what I'm thinking of.
- [157:49]
Jeff Blair
That's why, by the way, just getting back to this narrative, which is about to become extremely relevant. That's how they made phones, by finding the ones that the big corporate magazines had completely missed on Pinkerton. You know, I don't even know if you know this, Peter, but we did Weezer, like, about a year ago or something like that, and we kind of basically had the same thesis. Like, those early records are really great. And then the later stuff actually makes you question whether the records were as great as they were, but they really are. Pinkerton is their peak. And, yeah, you're right about how the Rolling Stone and the main trades missed on it. But Pitchfork Flagged it.
- [158:25]
Scott Bertram
Pitchfork gave it a 7.5. I found the original 7.5.
- [158:29]
Jeff Blair
Okay. Only that. So, I mean, but. But even there, that's a better review than most other people were giving it. Y and. And I'm sure that its legend increased after that. Which brings us to the way that sort of like the alts and you know, the indie mags or zines or websites, whatever, could either revive or sustain the reputations of bands and albums, they could also kill them. And this is the weird thing about what happens next. So the Dismemberment planet, okay, you would have thought through these four albums of evolution that they would only have been going on to greater things. And this is the part where I confess ignorance. I don't know if you know, Peter, but they decided to call it a day in 2002 after change, which is mystifying to me because I think this is of course their greatest album. And I would have loved to know what they'd have done next. Do you know why perhaps they'd decided to hang it up? It seems important to know this if we can. Do you have why they decided to break up?
- [159:28]
Peter Suderman
I can speculate in an informed way, but I want to be clear. I am not saying I know how this exactly what happened here.
- [159:36]
Jeff Blair
So here's. Let's wind here. Okay?
- [159:39]
Peter Suderman
The things that that stick out to me are they had that moment where they were on the cusp of big fame and it didn't happen. Similarly, my impression from reading what were kind of quasi blog ent by Travis Morrison, in at least most cases on the Dismemberment Plans website around that time is that while they were keeping it together financially, the band was not particularly lucrative. I have a. I. I have a specific memory that definitely could be wrong because this is 20 years ago and you can't Google this anymore. But I have a very specific memory of Travis Morrison posting something a little bit feisty on the website, saying something to the effect of, I, I made $22,000.40 or something. It was like 22 or $23,000, but it was a precise number of what he'd made from the dismemberment plan the year before. And it was like, it wasn't no money. And I knew touring bands where people made really not very much. And it was just like, well, let's eat McDonald's and keep the van together. And that's what we're going to do with our money here and we're going to try and make it. But doing that for Several years. Like at some point you either need to break out of that or you need to go pursue the rest of your lives. I think what they chose was to pur. Pursue the rest of their lives. And the other part of this goes is just they were playing so many dates. They were playing over a hundred shows a year on many years. And that's exhausting. If you've ever met, if you've ever had a friend who's been in a touring band, even these like short three, four week tours where you play 15 dates, people come back from those things and they are spent, they are exhausted. Especially if you're doing it in a way that is not, you know, that's. You're not. You don't have a bus, you don't have like a, you're not staying in hotels. You are.
- [161:27]
Jeff Blair
Have a routine. You don't know what you're doing. It's just catch as catch can. And it's like the early days R.E.M. it's a nightmare. Right?
- [161:34]
Peter Suderman
And for those small bands sleeping on, you know, the, the floors of their fans every night and that's what they were doing. I mean, I've read interviews about this. I also just know what it was like to be a small touring band back then from talking to people. That is an exhausting lifestyle. And even if you enjoy a lot of it, even if the shows are great, the fan connection is, is great. It's physically unpleasant. Even as young as, you know, being in your mid or late tw, like you want to settle down and you want to not sleep on floors 100 nights a year.
- [162:03]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, I mean, it was unpleasant enough to me when I was 17 years old. I can't imagine what it must feel like to have all of your records in the charts being praised to the stars by all the hip cognoscenti. And yeah, you still made $22,000.04 from this. All of this praise was worth that much. And that was before the record industry collapsed. So you can, you can kind of see why they maybe, maybe they decided to call it a day and it was a shame. They put out a greatest quote greatest hits album, which I don't recommend at all. Yeah, it's called the People's History. It's remix. Yes, is what it is. I, I picked it up and it's like, I don't even think they're good remixes. I'm. I'm very disappointed by it. I had to go back and make my own Best of Dismemberment Plan album.
- [162:46]
Peter Suderman
It's an interesting object, but it doesn't.
- [162:49]
Jeff Blair
It's an object, but it contributes nothing new and it doesn't even give you the old stuff you would have liked. I get. I get the democratic spirit of. It's very much in the keeping with the sort of dc, you know, diy, you know, democratic, you know, ide. But it doesn't quite work.
- [163:05]
Peter Suderman
And the last show that I saw them play before they announced their breakup.
- [163:09]
Jeff Blair
They had an official day. They had a nice formal breakup. It wasn't like everyone thought on stage. They scheduled it this time. Yeah, yeah.
- [163:16]
Peter Suderman
So I was. I sadly, because of some family complications, was not able to make their official final shows in or show in D.C. one of them got rained out. It was the whole. I knew some people who went but the last time I saw them on their last tour they were playing a yoga studio in. In Lexington, Kentucky for. I would be shocked if there were more than 150 people in that room and maybe it was 90. It was a great show and they played some of the. At least one I should say of the songs that would eventually go on Travis Morrison's solo album. Right. So they were clearly sort of thinking about their next step and the rest of their music. But even at that point in I probably would have been 0203 ish somewhere in that zone. Even at that point of oh, we released Pitchfork's best album of the year. Oh, we released yet another album that is huge that was hugely praised. They were still playing pretty small venues. It was. They had not broken out.
- [164:09]
Jeff Blair
It shows you the limits of that kind of online. So kind of a reminder to everybody, by the way, Twitter isn't real life, folks. You know, like the online praise isn't actually the way the masses necessarily move sometimes. And put in this case it's a shame because by gosh, they actually earned the praise by that point and they broke up and so they decided and Travis Morrison decided to put out a solo album which I thought actually had a pretty delightful name. It's a little map of his own mind. He called it Travistan. And Peter, do you want to tell us the story about how this album was received by the same people who had elevated dismemberment plan to the heights of, you know, hipster credibility? Or do you want me to.
- [164:53]
Peter Suderman
I can. I can sketch it out. So Travistan comes out and of course it's highly anticipated by the same people who made Emergency and I and Change big records or sort of at least big deal records for the online new music, indie rock Obsessed community that, you know, certainly I, I was paying attention to. I don't know if I was like part of, but like was paying attention to. Folks were really looking forward to this record when it came out in 2004. And when it came out it didn't sound exactly like a Dismemberment Plan album. It sounded close. I mean you could definitely sort of imagine some of these songs being played by the Dismemberment Plan. And like I said, at least one of them. At least one of them song for the Orca, which is, I think one of the better songs on travistant was a Dismemberment Plan song in live versions for some period of time at the end of their tenure together. But it didn't sound exactly like the Dismemberment Plan. It was moved a little bit more into sort of gimmicky kind of novelty songs. It was a little more funny and like sort of quirky literary, but not in a revealing and emotional and sort of very direct and up front cutaway.
- [166:05]
Unknown
You know the one Red on black Cool as New Year's Eve and real as a heart attack Staring from past a point from no turning back Watching the mess from above stacks of books, CDs and letters of complex love Noisy heads and unmade beds and surplus time and lines that never seem to rise.
- [166:49]
Peter Suderman
And the review came out on Pitchfork and it was just this tortured thing about a guy who'd been listening to this album over and over while in his car. And he loved the Dismemberment Plan. And they just. It wasn't just that he didn't like it. It was that he hated it, he resented. And they gave the album a 0.0. Now that's. This was just like a. This was the biggest possible, like heel turn from Pitchfork. The. The sort of. The decision to just be like, we're going to take our heroes and we're going to be like, they're the worst. There's no way that this could be any worse. I think the album is imperfect. I don't think it's a particularly amazing album, but I think there's a bunch of good songs that do a bunch of the same things that hit a bunch of the same notes that some of my favorite Dismembered Plan songs hit. And yet Pitchfork was just like, no, no, this is the worst thing. And it became. It's kind of legendary, kind of notorious. It didn't quite end his. It didn't quite literally end it because he did release another solo album after Travis Denton. There is a second one, and in some ways it's, I think, even a little bit better. And also the Dismemberment Plan got back together, or sort of got back together, played some reunion dates and released another album. It didn't totally end his musical career, but what it did was it ensured that there was no way that he was going to break out and have the big success that he almost had with the Dismemberment Plan as a solo artist.
- [168:18]
Jeff Blair
He was going to be able to build on his trajectory, on the creative trajectory that he had already accumulated over those last decade. That's what. That's what pisses me off. So I come to this new right, and I. I read both the review and I listened to the album, and I thought, well, this is transparently a hit job. There's no way these two things match. And I read the review, and it's very long and tortured. Some of the other famous Pitchfork zero point zeros are literally one sentence long.
- [168:45]
Scott Bertram
Or a picture worse, or a picture.
- [168:47]
Jeff Blair
Of a dog pissing into its, like, mouth or something like that, right? Oh, God. But this one was a long, tortured thing. And clearly he's praising half the music. He's like, well, this is good. And actually, no, that's quite good as well. And then he gives it a 0.0, and all that everybody remembers is the 0.0. If you had given that review and then you've given it, like, a 5.3 or whatever the heck the stupid numbering system is, you know, nobody would remember it. They're like, oh, it's a mediocre soul. It's like Stephen Malus's first album, which is not great either, frankly, after Pavement. And that's actually the analogy that I'm paying attention to, because Pavement broke up in 99. Stephen Mountain comes out with his first album in 01. And Pitchfork, I thought, gave it, like, a perfectly passable, like, 7.5 kind of review, which is, I think, probably more than it deserved. I'm a huge Pavement fan and I didn't like that record that much. This record is not as good in any way as Change, but it's like, I'd say at least, you know, 60 to 50% is good. And I guess it's interesting because it gives you a sense of what was that Dismemberment Plan drew from the rest of its members, as opposed to Travis Morrison in terms of their. Their songwriting, the music, as opposed to the lyrics. I am frustrated at the way it was so easy back then for you to just sort of crush a certain kind of person's ego. I feel like it was the ego really that it maybe not just the momentum, the commercial momentum, but I read this piece, I think, Peter, you sent it to me about like some guy went back to track down the victims of all the 0.0.
- [170:23]
Peter Suderman
There's a slate WR who I want to say it was 2013. Anyway, it was a while after the Traveston review came out and emailed a bunch of people who had been hit.
- [170:32]
Jeff Blair
A decade later, basically. Yeah. And Morrison's. You should read his comments in that review. There's just. They're very, very dignified. He's like, basically first he says, like, I'm not going to talk about this. But then inevitably he's like, okay, yeah, okay, I have a little something to say about this. Right? So he just adds up a little follow up. It's just clear that he was heartbroken by it, that he felt crushed by it. And then there's no way you can interpret it a decade, decade after the fact as anything other than that it had sapped a certain will that he might have had to carry on. And so I thought this, this, this solo album is perfectly cromulent. I don't think it's great, but I like, you know, born in 72. I like the title, or I call it the title, Attack the Change because it's so close to, you know, male change. I don't think it's a bad record really at all. I just think it's a mediocre record. But it's not a 0.0. And it could have been the beginning of a fresh start. Just the way that Steve Malchus's first Soul Al wasn't that great, but he kind of figured it out and he's now making pretty interesting records. We could have had a second act from this group and we never really got it just because of the weird whims of the critical industry at a random point in, in history. And that's kind of if there's a tragedy in the Dismemberment Plan. I think that actually kind of is what it is. It's a shame.
- [171:53]
Peter Suderman
Yeah. And this just goes back to what I was saying earlier. I really, really think that both Pitchfork and Dismemberment Plan were creatures of each other. The Pitchfork got some of its power by promoting Dismemberment Plan successfully. Dismemberment Plan rose to a certain sort of indie prominence based, not entirely, but heavily based on Pitchfork's promotion of them in the late 90s and early aughts. And then of course this goes to what you were saying Jeff, about Pitchfork getting kind of high on, on its own power and just sort of deciding to be merciless because that was what got attention and because that was the kind of thing that they could, that they were known for were the out the. The records where they would either say this is the greatest thing that has ever happened to music or they would say this is a calumny. This is, you know, it just an, an epic disaster. You know, just shows that. And, and that sort of either incred huge praise or total dismissal was what they became known for around this period. In particular, very mean reviews that were maybe a little bit entertaining but often came at the. I think especially in this case came at the expense not only of well, we're going to make fun of this famous person, but in some cases these people were not that famous. They were not big successful rich rock stars. They were people who maybe had promising musical careers ahead of them that Pitchfork for, for Clicks for Amusement just decided to stamp out, I will say because.
- [173:22]
Jeff Blair
I was bored that day and I needed to make deadline like what their biggest famous, most controversial writer, Brent DeCrescenzo. That guy was infamous for writing the worst, most self indulgent reviews. He finally got fired for it was discovered he just made up. He wasn't actually listening to the albums he was reviewing because he pretended to review an album that hadn't been released yet. I think that's what finally got him canned. He was just writing fan fict in his head. And that's what Pitchfork had deteriorated into is early as like say 2000, 2001. Those guys weren't the most talented critics. To be perfectly honest, there's not a single one of them. As an actual critic I would rate particularly highly as either an observer of music or listener or as just a stylist, a craftsman. And they got real powerful real fast and abused it very quickly. So I guess that's why I've always been bugged, you know. You know, by them. And then reading about the story, it brought it all back to me again. And I just. I'm going to let go of my hatred. I'm going to lay my burdens down. And I wanted to know as we conclude this episode, if anybody had any thoughts on the reunion album because although the band broke up, they did reunite. As, as Peter pointed out, these guys could sell at the Black Cat, at the Drop of a hat 9:30 club. It wouldn't be, you know, it take five seconds. People would show up and queue around the corner. But they actually did the thing that Pavement did. Did as well. And everything worked out great for them. What do you think of as a tour dismemberment plan? Reunited to tour, and then they recorded an album called Uncanny Valley. This is, in theory, the last Dismemberment Plan album. I think a lot of people treat it as sort of a footnote. I was wondering what you thought about it, guys.
- [175:04]
Peter Suderman
It's definitely a footnote. I don't dislike this album, but this is an album that came out and it was by, you know, my favorite band. And I listened to it quite a bit for several months. And I don't think I have gone back to this album since. Since it. Since it was released in, I believe, 2013. It wasn't that I. This wasn't one where I spun it once and was like, well, I don't like that. I'm not. It was like, oh, this is new Dismemberment Plan music. And it has so many of the characteristics that drew me to this band to begin with. It's funny, it's light, it's playful, it's her. And it just doesn't have. It just doesn't have that edge. It doesn't have that. That spark of intensity and originality. And it also, I think that for probably, I don't know, maybe this is totally psychoanalyzing somebody who I've never met in my life.
- [175:56]
Jeff Blair
Oh, we do it all the time.
- [175:57]
Peter Suderman
Here on Lord knows whether this is true. I see in this album a kind of reluctance to really reveal yourself. And I wonder if the Pitchfork, Trav and 0.0 Experience made it a little harder for these guys when they were writing for Travis, at least in particular. But probably the others, they probably all felt that at least a little bit. They're all clearly. Still. I don't know if they're. I want to say they're friends, but they're clearly still quite friendly. I mean, watching them on stage, these guys just a week or two ago, these guys have incredible kind of stage, like they just get along in a. In a really great way. You can see the band mind meld. You can see that these guys who spent 100 plus nights a year on the road together, who once lived in a house together, you know, who spent a lot of time together in their formative years, and maybe they've all gone on to live separate lives, but they like. It's like when I get back together with my college buddies who I Still talk to. But I see them maybe once a year and it's just a bunch of dudes who were like, well, yep, we lived together for a long time and now we're just. We're in the same headspace for the rest of our lives. That's. That is what this band is like. But. So I suspect that the whole band was affected by this and I suspect that there, even if it's unacknowledged, they decided they wanted to make something light, something playful, something that leaned into some of the sort of more gimmicky novelty type aspects of their songs without sort of pulling all the way back to Is terrified.
- [177:36]
Unknown
Sometimes you give me the very same look you gave me when we first met the very same eyes the very same smile how can I forget? The background is always different the hairdou is obvious but the look is eternal and it's everlasting and it always blows me away Blows me away what did you say? What did you say? What did you say? Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I was just looking.
- [178:33]
Peter Suderman
But that did that. And that be Uncanny Valley, their. Their sort of final album, their footnote, you know, Get Back Together album. It doesn't rock as much. And I think this is actually a big problem is like, they. They just got a little too far away from their hardcore punk rock roots. You can see them pulling away over the course of their first four albums. Right? Like, there's a. It's. The first one is just very much like, oh, These guys, the D.C. hardcore punk scene, like, very clearly with a fourth album, they're doing something that you can see the evolution, but it's very different. And here I think, like, you. You just lose all of the. Not all, but you lose a little too much of the kind of raw, raucous punk rock energy that helped make some of their sadder and dancier songs in the early albums. Really.
- [180:03]
Unknown
We don't leave anyone behind we go and get it together this time we can't be stopped not much else to say and it feels so good to be on our way.
- [180:20]
Jeff Blair
Gosh darn it, Peter. They're just not as uncomfortable in their own skins anymore. I mean, it seems like they, they. They got happy being who they were. So, yes, that nervous, twittery, jittery kind of stuff. In the same way, it's tough when.
- [180:36]
Peter Suderman
You grow up and it's all okay.
- [180:38]
Scott Bertram
Yeah, I know. Combined with Peter's point is, I think lyrically it's not enough to make up for what's also missing Musically, the word play is a little forced. It's not quite as sharp as it was previously. And for as much as they probably enjoyed it and had fun and made an album together, I just don't think they had much to say. When you get right down to it, lyrically, then the music is not as strong.
- [181:08]
Jeff Blair
This is like. This is like the story with the My Bloody Valentine reunion album as well. And it's just like. It's like, you know, these. In fact, My Bloody Valentine, a band I hear a fair amount of in early dismemberment plan, but I was just like, you didn't have anything left, you know, or, you know, I don't know. I feel disappointed having to say that. That's the way it usually is.
- [181:29]
Scott Bertram
Though I'll leave at least on a high note. I think there's one really good song here, at least, and maybe Peter can tell me I'm right or wrong, since he's the bigger fan. I think in Invisible is a really good song. I think it's the one time that musically, you hear some of the. Some of the ticks and some of the trademarks from past albums, and lyrically, too. You know, I thought I'd be working in Midtown, a winner. Now I'm biting my nails and I'm calling it dinner and the very end ways it's at the after party for the after party for the after party and I don't know anyone. That sort of feeling is still, I think, relatable at almost any age. And that song is one where music meets the lyrics. That's the strongest track, Invisible, on this uncanny Valley album.
- [182:14]
Unknown
Snow on the window of the taxi back home I just sit back and I turn off my phone the streets are glittering without a care and I just vanish into thin air Because I'm invisible yeah, that's me if you look then you'll see right through me Someday I'm gonna make my move what do I got to lose? Invisible yeah, that's me. Of course it gets a little lonely Someday I'm gonna find my groove what do I got to lose? Cause it's the after party for the after party for the after party and I don't know and I don't know Where I'm going I don't know what I'm doing At its last call it's always last call.
- [183:13]
Jeff Blair
We used to watch my thunder entirely, Scott. So I think, unless, Peter, you have anything left to add, I. I believe we have come to the end of this journey. We're all fully dismembered you have no arms, no legs. Neither do I.
- [183:25]
Peter Suderman
That was the plan.
- [183:26]
Scott Bertram
We'll reassemble here to close things out as we reach the point of the break program where each of us recommend to you, the listener, two albums and five songs that you must hear from the Dismemberment Plan. Our guest, Peter Suderman from Reason magazine and the Cocktails with Suderman Substack, you have the floor to present your two albums and your five songs.
- [183:50]
Peter Suderman
Okay, so let's go with the five songs. First two of them come from EPs rather than from their sort of mainline albums. And the first one is a rarity that almost no one has heard. And in fact, in 15 or so shows I've only heard them play live once. And this is a song off of their Ice of Boston ep and this is the only ep, the only release of any kind that they ever actually released through Interscope Records. Yeah, and the, the song is the first anniversary of your last phone call. It is a great song. It should have been on Emergency and I. As far as I'm concerned it is of that quality of that era, of that style, of that mode. It is just this, this sad, angry, literary, a little funny, but kind of bleak song about a guy who is thinking of the, the one year anniversary of the last time he got a phone call. And then again this is a, you know, sort of our, our pre. IPhone pre texting era when that was how you communicated with your people. And it's just, just a. It is, it is a fantastic build song and they do. They have a lot of these. But this is one of their. One of the songs that just sort of builds to a big climax and really kind of hits you at the very end of it in a way that. That is like works even better than a lot of their other songs. So that's number one. Four other songs here. Well, just obviously the City and Time Bomb if you are going to. If you get a survey of their big hits as. And then I think you are invited is the song that you need to listen to to understand what the Dismemberment Plan is like when it is trying to move off of the sort of. When it's trying to do its sort of novelty song, when it's gimmick song things. Right. Because again these are novelty tracks. These are almost weird Alish gimmicky sort of joke things. Except they're not. Except they always find some way to actually have a real emotional core. And then the final from another EP with the band Juno, we Already talked about the COVID song on that album, but the one that I want to point out is the Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich, which is their most fun live song. It plays pretty well on an album, too, but I would actually just encourage you to seek out a YouTube version of this song because it's so fast, so high speed. This is where you see Travis coming as close as he ever comes, I think, to just straight up rapping. There is a just like a nearly like a funk backing track to this song. It's so goofy. And there's a like a cute little break that happens early where they. Early on in the song where they slow everything halfway down and it just becomes this like, oh, like this big, like. I don't know, this. This big sort of like breakdown dance moment. There's like a dance move that everybody in the crowd does at the. When they play the song live right at that moment. I just love that song. So that's the five songs, then, the two albums. I have to say Emergency Night, I just have to, because it's my favorite album of all time. As much as I think Change is their next best album and nearly as good as Emergency Night, the other album I'm going to say is Dismemberment Plan is terrified, I think, especially after you have heard Emergency and I heard where like and heard sort of where it's all leading to. Going back to the dismemberment plane is terrified. And seeing the thing they did right before that and getting to listen to the ideas that were floating around, not quite fully formed, but getting really close. That album plays better in retrospect after you have processed Emergency and I and come to love it.
- [187:36]
Scott Bertram
Scott all right, I'll begin by actually echoing Peter's two albums. I think that those are the right choices. In fact, Emergency and I and is Terrified. Those are the two I would recommend to people. And the five songs, skipping the first album completely, I think Ice of Boston, which is one I referenced earlier as being the one that first grabbed me this is the Life from that same record, what do you want me to say? Is one that is immediately accessible for, I think, a number of listeners tonight. Time bomb, for sure. And that fifth track, I might as well throw in Invisible. It's at least one from the reunion album. You get a few years into the future and you hear what they sound like. That's a quality track, and it's the one that I think I pluck from that reunion album of 2013. Jeff, over to you.
- [188:31]
Jeff Blair
This is the Easiest thing in the world for me because I'm all about.
- [188:35]
Scott Bertram
I'm.
- [188:35]
Jeff Blair
I'm. I'm pitiless. I'm about maximum spread and coverage. So yes, Emergency and, and I and Change are the top two albums. Duh. I'm not going to mention a single song from either of those two albums because you should have both of those two albums. And if you have these other five songs, well, then I, I would argue you have your emergency introduction package, you have your emergency plan for the dismemberment plan. And the five songs are going to just be from the first two records from Exclamation Point or Chick, whatever we want to call it. Okay, Jokes over. And I don't write. And that's them finally growing up from the sort of spastic and ill formed Minutemen influenced post punk to something that's a little bit more focused and actually has melodies. Those are both great songs. And then from Dismembering Planet's Terrified, I'll take the Ice of Boston, of course. And you already mentioned it, Scott. And then this is the Life, which I think is the really great one from that. And then finally, and since we already mentioned it and I haven't heard the sappy stupid pop hit version of it, Crush. I really have to now go back and. And hear the dumb pop version of Crush, because I.
- [189:46]
Peter Suderman
You really do.
- [189:48]
Jeff Blair
I'm gonna do it right after we log off. In fact, actually I was really taken by their version of it. And because again, this is a period that I lived through, they were playing this memberment plan might as well have been making their music in my literal backyard. And the whole time I was just up in my, you know, gloomy corner room, room with the shutters drawn, listening to like old who 45s and something like that. I missed out on this band when they were there for me to appreciate at the time. I'm filled with a bunch of regret about that, you know, because then of course then I moved away and now here I am in Chicago. But I. I just think about this music. I'm so glad that I discovered it. And it's a window into a path not taken by me, but one that I. I kind of wish I had been around to do.
- [190:41]
Unknown
I find glowing shadows like snowbound ghosts that go up and down in epileptic shivers and negative radioactive slivers in a landscape of endless little glitter and it tastes in my mouth so sweet get so bitter we exhaust ourselves trying to get there somebody all right but try to fill the endless night Fel Fast enough and hold tight. We can't give up without a fight. And we're going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back. We're going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back.
- [191:39]
Peter Suderman
All right. It's okay. Some of the rest of us got to take that pass, you know, Lucky you lucky you stay in D.C. and work for a reason.
- [191:46]
Jeff Blair
Yeah, that's.
- [191:47]
Peter Suderman
That was the alternative here.
- [191:49]
Jeff Blair
I live in a land of unreason, my friends. I live in Chicago.
- [191:53]
Scott Bertram
There we are, the Political Beats. Look at the music and career of the dismemberment plan. We thank our guest. He's the features editor. Reason writes the substack cocktails with Suterman. Find him on xetersuderman. Peter Suderman, thanks so much for joining us here on Political Beats.
- [192:11]
Peter Suderman
Thank you so much for having me, Jeff.
- [192:14]
Scott Bertram
Unlike our usual plans, we have a plan for upcoming episodes and so we can tell people that the very next full episode is going a totally different direction and covering ZZ Top. We all have to grow beards in the next three weeks. That's actually me.
- [192:33]
Jeff Blair
I'm the one guy who doesn't have to grow the beard.
- [192:35]
Scott Bertram
You guys, our guest and I will grow the beards. We'll talk ZZ Top next. And we'll also remind you about the Nick Low interview available on the feed and the video version. And a bit more content is over on the Patreon side of things, so don't forget that Jeff's on X at Esoteric cd. My name is Scott Bertram. I'm there at Scott Bertram again patreon.com Political beats to help support the show, stay ad free, entry level, mid level and upper level. And our upper level people get the access to that show. The September exclusive content is our Nicklo interview video and a little more content than what's available on the main site. Subscribe to our feed for new episodes or go to nationalreview.com and find more there too on the podcast tab. Review on Facebook on X oticalbeats. Join the conversation there. This has been a presentation of National Review. This is Political Beats.