It's Automatic, Caught In-Between: The Dismemberment Plan's "Change"
Is it even possible to objectively look back at something?
Hi again! The long-awaited solo debut of former Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep comes out today, October 4th, and while I'm more excited about it than any other album released in a while, I can't exactly write a whole review for it in a few hours, so enjoy this analysis of the Dismemberment Plan's 2001 album Change.
No matter how you spin it, Change is an outlier in a few ways. The final record by the Washington, DC indie outfit until they reunited in the 2010s, it completely leaves behind the punk influence (and with it, a lot of the immature shenanigans) of their previous records, shifting towards a more reflective, emotionally mature viewpoint. Multiple band members have mentioned Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark as a key influence, and accordingly, the instrumentation is relatively soft and jazz-like. It's also a concept album of sorts. Let's take a look at a few songs.
After opener "Sentimental Man," which I'll get back to in a minute, "The Face of the Earth" stuns with a tale of a former partner who was suddenly yanked into the sky mid-kiss, never to be seen again. Inspired by a similar story about Michael Jordan, whose girlfriend died in a flash flood while attending UNC-Chapel Hill in the 1990s, it's a bit odd musically as well as lyrically, featuring chords and turns of phrase you'd never find in the band's earlier work. There's no chorus to speak of - the focus is on the story being told, with the tone bewildered and slightly hurt, as though the narrator has somehow been wronged by her sudden loss. (Does that seem a bit entitled to you? She's the one who died, right? Unreliable, emotionally immature narrators & characters crop up constantly here, to the point where it must be a conscious choice in the writing - a few more examples will show you what I mean.)
Themes of urban fantasy or speculative fiction certainly crop up in the Plan's earlier work (consider "8½ Minutes" from 1999's critically-acclaimed Emergency & I, which depicts a similar situation to Cormac Mccarthy's The Road, with the sun burning out and the world falling into semi-darkness) but frontman Travis Morrison really leans into them here. Typically, it's not just Mars Volta/Black Midi-style sci-fi surrealism, but an open-ended allegory for some aspect of life being represented. For instance, "Superpowers," the next track, opaquely shows the misery and discomfort of an empath with the power to feel others' emotional states and sensations remotely. It's clear that what they're really talking about is more of a real-life struggle to comfort others - or maybe a depressed detachment from your own feelings. Either way, there's always some subtlety.
Plus, listen to how that chorus leaps out at you from a bizarre angle - the songwriting is just so smart.
Going further into the album, while the first songs are certainly great, it really hits its stride on the B-side, some of the best material the band ever put out. It careens between barely-there acoustic ballads with abstract lyrics ("Automatic," a piece of poetry that really deserves its own entire essay, which I am not in any imaginable way equipped to write) and jungle-inspired, rapid-fire drumming with abrupt back-and-forth shifts ("The Other Side"). But to fully understand it, you have to go back to "Sentimental Man" and the real concept of the album.
Look at these lyrics - like a twisted version of Lennon's "Imagine," the album opens with a dead-eyed, apathetic statement that nothing really matters and there is no such thing as fate or destiny, delivered in a pathos-drenched croon. Later on in the song, the narrator's facade starts to break down, mentioning "flak[ing] on every deal I ever made with myself / Before the ink could dry" and questioning whether he's as "sentimental" as anyone else despite this worldview. It all sounds carefree and happy when Morrison sings it over the gorgeous studio production (courtesy of Chad Clark and J. Robbins of Inner Ear Studios, a Virginia recording studio that's worked with the likes of Fugazi and Bad Brains), but on the page, it looks a bit more cynical.
This brings us, finally, to the real recurring theme of the album, which is people who think they're more objective and removed from a situation than they really are. “Sentimental Man" sees himself as above superstition, but is deeply insecure about it, the guy from "Face of the Earth" is stuck reliving the past he insists he's so far removed from ("Nothing's really different, though it seems like I've spent my life in planes…"), and so on.
The real power of the second half of the album is that the characters get at least a bit more self-aware. "Following Though," an emotionally devastating highlight, follows a narrator after an inevitable-seeming breakup, pathetically insisting that he'll be fine and that he "can do it anywhere with anyone at any time." Yet the power here doesn't come from that sentiment, it comes from renouncing it - the last verse ("I dishonor the past…") makes it clear that he's soon going to change his ways and stop wasting his time on agreements where he can't hold up his end or, fittingly, follow through.
Towards the end, we're presented two back-to-back standout tunes that exemplify opposite manifestations of the album concept. "Time Bomb" harkens back to the band's earlier work, featuring an eye-watering synth line and spiteful lyrics about getting revenge, or at least closure, with a long-ago rival (or lover, it's not clear). There may be some temporal or spatial distance from the addressee, but it's clear they live in the narrator's head rent-free. On the other end of the spectrum, we have "The Other Side," where the mental distance between the narrator and his partner (though it could definitely be viewed as directed towards the abstract concept of perfection, "Visions of Johanna"-style) is out in the open, fully acknowledged and documented. While he wants to bridge the gap and improve their dynamic through various methods (leaving town and starting a new life, going to a party, the power of music, and a "funny number" (actually, what the hell is a funny number?) are all mentioned), the general feeling is that the distance to 'the other side' of the connection is too far, and true perfection can't be attained.
To cap it off, we have "Ellen and Ben," a tale of a loving relationship that suddenly breaks apart - at least for the first half of the song. The second half ends the album on a truly bizarre note, cutting away from the (un)happy couple and talking about how the narrator, a secondary character who barely knew either of them, had a 'book of modern fighter planes with F-15s' as a child and is now 'trying to keep [his] eyes on the prize.' It's a nonsequitur, but somehow it completely makes sense in context. All the tortured relationships and moral dilemmas shown in the other songs are in the past now, and the focus goes back to the individual, who has clearly learned nothing from the experience. The circle of stupidity is complete. Isn't that a cheery prospect?
Jaffeelabs returns on October 18th with a review of Geordie Greep's debut album "The New Sound."