No Brakes on Life

Its so funny how easy it is to forget about certain things.

This week has been The Dismemberment Plan in all of their iterations. Yesterday consisted of me listening to a couple D Plan albums on repeat. D Plan is not a huge thing in NYC which is so strange coming from Virginia because, well, if you don't like D Plan in Virginia you're pretty much banished.

Truth is it took me a while to get used to the idiosyncrasies in The D Plan's music. Its funny to watch those idiosyncrasies through D Plan's career, from "!" through "Is Terrified" and "Emergency and I" one can really hear each individual member's personal style coagulating from the hit you with a frying pan sound of "!" into the subtle weirdness of Emergency and I. Seriously check it out:

"!" is a pretty mediocre album that is telling of what the D Plan would become. but upon first listen its easy to notice how low the vocals are in the mix and how much the bass sounds like a fucking howitzer. Mixing must have been such a difficult task for D Plan througout their career since each member is fighting each other member for singularity of style but thats what makes the sound work so well. They're a unit that consistently sounds about to explode and the more subtle they were able to make that explosion sound, the better their albums were.

so anyhow here's the first song off of D Plan's first album called Survey Says:


now check out Is Terrified when they started to figure something out about their DC roots or something, and Travis Morrison found out about falsetto. Actually the song is pretty standard guitar rock during the chorus, but check out the synth and drums verses and post chorus.


And then of course Emergency and I when they managed to hone their sound to as sharp as it would ever be. I suppose The City is a bad example but its just such a great song that I can't pass up putting it on here.


and then maybe a little after that comes the Juno/D Plan split where the D plan released their biggest booty shakin' song, "The D ismemberment Plan Gets Rich" that I feel magnificently condenses their raucous premergency and I sound with the sharpness but ultimately too condensed sounds of Change.


god that song is so fucking great. shook my ass to that song on stage w/ D Plan at their last show (not their post-breakup last shows).