Favorite Albums: 2000-2004
32. Travis Morrison, Travistan
Original position on my Stylus ballot: #46
Aside from Liz Phair cheating on indie rock with the Matrix, Pitchfork could think of no fouler music in the first half of the ’00s than that made by goofy, vocal white liberals unafraid to play with hip-hop. Despite being the leader of the Dismemberment Plan and an actual Pitchfork contributor, Travis Morrison scored a 0.0 with his solo debut, .8 points lower than three white women rapping about their support of Gore. Hell, his tossed off acoustic cover of “What’s Your Fantasy?” even got half a star - though odds are that bilestarter (which, yes, I dig) set the scene for this takedown, which played some small part in his eventual decision to get out of the rock race and do tech stuff for the Huffington Post.
Morrison, responding to my open letter in Stylus (the “open letter” format is bullshit if you expend no effort to get it to the subject, so I e-mailed it to him), said he wanted to make a “breezy, funny, folky record, low on angst” after the “neurosis rock” of the last D-Plan album, though he knew “collegiate angst” was indie rock’s lyrical raison d’etre (the 10.0 review of the Plan’s Emergency & I, while solid, is evidence). The reaction to his “shoutout to Schoolhouse Rock” helps explain why there’s so much mushmouth in indie - while not everyone wants jaunty songs about prophets, presidential coins and wildlife, or determinedly sane meditations on beatdowns, death, a Che Guevara poster and dysfunctional families (not to mention a Fugazi-quoting anthem about privilege that features a munchkin wondering if Travis will play “The City”), the idea that some hipster scrub would consider them The Worst Thing Ever suggests some serious self-loathing. Me, I love my goofy, well-intentioned ass.
