Emergency & I - The Dismemberment Plan (1999)

(The Nines - looking for some rhyme or reason for what to pick next, i started with a 2019 record and then went back ten years each time.)

This was one everybody talked about when it came out. I know I listened to it (this was an era when I was more likely to download MP3s from a hotline server than to pay for music). Spider In The Snow is the only song I have any memory of, and even that is pretty much limited to the lyric about the trash going out on Tuesday now.

As I’ve outlined, I don’t know that I was super enamored of this record then. Partly because, having not bought it, it was part of the early experience of not valuing something I’d gotten for free. Partly it’s the fact that, while I listened to alt / indie rock after this, this felt like kind of a bookend; Like wordy and clever post-punk was end-of-life, and whatever came next was going to be different. Partly because I’d already discovered electronic music, and was listening to Moby, Future Sound Of London, Aphex Twin, and Seefeel to get my edgy-music fix. Partly that shortly after this i met and fell in love with Modest Mouse’s The Moon And Antarctica, which covers similar ground but which I find more enjoyable.

I don’t have any animus towards this album. It just felt at the time like it was important, but now it feels like a bit of an afterthought. Listening to it again, and trying to hear it for what it is, I just don’t find much I like in the droning guitars, the slice-of-life lyrics, amateurish use of drum machines and synths. It’s certainly catchy and explosive in places, but it feels like the limit of what this kind of punk-band-grows-up-a-little sound can offer.

Tracks I liked:

Spider In the Snow - as snarky and self-hating as the rest of it, but somehow more fun.

I Love a Magician - a genuine rocker

You Are Invited - a story about being invited to something. droning drum machines, but the choruses are classic shout-along