The Dismemberment Plan perfectly captured the feelings of 20-something uncertainty and anxiety on Emergency & I. It remains a touchstone for those who experienced it in real time because its images of trudging off to temporary work, trying to save relationships not worth saving, and feeling isolated resonated deeply for those trying to find their bearings after college. The evergreen themes and the band’s refusal to tie the record’s sonics to late 1990s alternative rock make it an enduring collection, the type of record that inspires tattoos (Morrison said he has seen many fans with the album cover replicated in ink on their bodies. I have a tribute to “You Are Invited” on mine).
The staying power of Emergency & I lies in the universality of its themes; if you are of a certain age, it can simultaneously take you back and help you wrestle with your current situation. As evidenced by the band’s triumphant set at the Best Friends Forever Festival in Las Vegas, the Dismemberment Plan have attracted a new generation of fans. It’s a thrilling development for a group who, like their Washington, DC-based peers Shudder to Think, were out of step with the trends of the time, creating timeless records instead of time-stamped.
However, where part of the pleasure of Shudder to Think is attempting to unravel Craig Wedren’s lyrics, Travis Morrison’s directness cuts to the bone. Morrison’s observations about the ongoing, hopefully only temporary, diminishing returns of life is the gift that keeps giving. That sting of lost love in your 20s and the realization that a marriage isn’t built to last are equally served by songs like “What Do You Want Me to Say?”. The line “You thought you just might need a little change / Now It seems you have nothing but” has lived in my mind rent-free for decades now.
As the stakes get higher and you realize that emergencies will always be lurking, waiting to bubble up, you start to realize that this is a record you can, and likely will, live with and through until the end. Despite the heavy topics, when these songs are played live, it feels more like a party, a release, a reminder that you’re surrounded by people who also relate to the real and imagined anxieties of life.
The only telling aspect of this timeless record being released in the 1990s is that the story of Emergency & I even has a detour into a brief major label record deal. The Dismemberment Plan spent 1998 and 1999 on the Interscope roster recording Emergency & I, swapping Is Terrified’s snark on tracks like “The Standing Still” and “Academy Award” for more introspective songs. That wasn’t a complete surprise. “The Ice of Boston” points the way forward to Emergency & I, with its mix of humor, isolation, and a big chorus.
However, Interscope dropped the group before releasing it. That honor wound up going to DeSoto Records, and Barsuk Records has handled the reissues. Getting dropped turned out to be a good thing for them, as they could record with major label money without consequence.
In Pitchfork’s first Best of the 1990s list, Emergency & I landed at #16, even though it was only a few weeks old. Reviewer William Morris said, “The album’s lyric book reads better than half the modern volumes on any bookshelf.” The songs’ characters are self-isolating, disappointed by their relationships on the front end, but in the back half of the record, coming to a patently Gen-X observation that our lives don’t matter much in the end, so appreciate people and experiences while they are there, but only after imagining the apocalypse. It is heartfelt but self-aware enough to poke fun at the “tragedies” of our 20s by pulling in machines designed to erase feelings, love with a magician, and a mysterious invitation to be oneself.
The key inspirations for Emergency & I’s lyrics were the death of Morrison’s father and a traumatic breakup. The latter’s magnitude is apparent in the bleakly funny lines in songs like “What Do You Want Me to Say?” and “8 ½ Minutes”. The characters in Emergency & I’s songs are mostly isolating, hiding out from friends and social interaction in general, unsure if they can even fit in if they try. Knowing what was on Morrison’s mind makes it easy to assume that the vitriol was aimed at himself and his former love. However, Morrison’s lyrical prowess is such that he shifts perspectives mid-song, even speculating about what the other person is feeling and doing. Still, much of the focus is on the main characters, who are too broken, anxious, and horny to function around people.
Musically, Emergency & I marks a major leap forward from the previous two Dismemberment Plan records. “A Life of Possibilities” opens the record, and immediately, it sounds different from other Dismemberment Plan records. The manic energy of the first two Dismemberment Plan records has been dashed in favor of a slow burn to a cathartic build to a big climax that seems to be talking the narrator into seeing what’s out there post-breakup. Rather than leaning into the high-energy noise that earned comparisons to contemporaries like Brainiac, this time out, the band sound more mature, and even when songs do revisit the sound of the earlier records, such as on “I Love a Magician” and “Girl-O-Clock”, there is a tension that drives them.
Elsewhere, the Dismemberment Plan swirl in R&B, hip-hop, and rock in ways that recall the inventiveness of bands like Talking Heads but sounded like nothing else out there in 1999. The widening of people’s listening habits has likely played a factor in the Dismemberment Plan’s durability. Morrison has never been shy about declaring his love of contemporary pop music. The Dismemberment Plan covered Jennifer Page’s smash “Crush”, and played a little of Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” at Best Friends Forever.
“Spider in the Snow” paints a vivid picture of mundane, post-breakup life, with details about when the trash goes out and when winter freezes the life out of fall. There is a chilliness to the song, too. “The Jitters” sounds like it could have been written by Travis Bickle, with its character doing 10,000 pushups a day and giving up before he even tries to make a human connection. It is deadpan and truly unsettling.
On “Gyroscope”, a track with an insistent bounce with a black heart lurking in the lyrics, Morrison observes that the woman across the club is spinning like a gyroscope to keep her heart from breaking. That “ain’t no gyroscope can spin forever” line is acidic, but ending the song on his own for those last few words, “Something I see lately makes me doubt it,” makes those words sting while emphasizing the loneliness the narrator is experiencing.
“You are Invited” reads like a great short story. On the surface, it tells the story of a person who receives a mysterious mail envelope that reads the titular phrase. Still, it’s more about overcoming isolation and anxiety. At one point, it was going to feature Morrison accompanied by only keys, but this version’s big crack open is so thrilling that it would have been a crime not to use it. It’s one of the signature songs on the record, a fan favorite and live staple, and a moment of positivity.
“The City” is one of those songs that best exemplifies the growth of the Dismemberment Plan. Thematically, it is of a piece with “Spider in the Snow”, presenting disconnection in the wake of a breakup. Morrison catalogs the things he’s noticing more now that he’s alone, culminating early in the song with “The city’s been dead since you’ve been gone,” but later delivering the true crusher, “Everything I love, everything I hold dear / Heads out sometimes / All I ever say now is goodbye.” All the while, the song hums along like a subway train, synthesizers riding atop it all. As it nears the close, it begins to wind itself down, slowing down until the end, as though that subway train is reaching its destination.
“8 ½ Minutes” takes the sadness and anxiety and spins it into an apocalypse before “Back and Forth” shuffles toward some kind of acceptance. It recalls other “what does it all mean?” inquiries like Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”. You can hear the clarity building as Morrison runs through a heady stream of consciousness that builds to the final lines. “Back and Forth” isn’t often cited as one of the best songs on Emergency & I, but it is a reason we keep coming back. We need the reassurance that we’ll be able to manage this emergency, and we know we can come back when the next one arises.
From here, the Dismemberment Plan returned in 2001 with Change, an aptly named record that retained the hip-hop-inspired rhythms but did away with the manic energy in favor of something more settled but still utterly compelling. Twitchy songs like “Girl O’Clock” had been replaced with the even-keeled “Sentimental Man”, with a narrator who “is an Old Testament type of guy” who likes his coffee black and his parole denied. The loss of potential romantic connection is recounted with a clear head on “The Face of the Earth” and “Following Through”, two of the highlights. It all ends with “Ellen and Ben”, a song about a couple who had a brief but passionate time together and a narrator who is keeping busy, hanging with his nephew and keeping his eyes on the prize.
Inadvertently, the Dismemberment Plan dropped these two classics on us as the country was in two different stages of fear and panic, with Change coming out in October 2001 and Emergency & I. While Emergency & I speaks to the isolation and anxiety of the Information Age and Y2K panic through personal heartbreak, the band couldn’t have possibly known how right the time would be for Change and its even-keeled, settled energy post-9/11. The Dismemberment Plan always know what we need before we need it. As their song goes, I guess you could call these superpowers.