Favorite Albums: 2000-2004
21. Dismemberment Plan, Change
Original position on my Stylus ballot: #24
Just because I enjoy Travistan doesn’t mean I thought it was a step up from the D-Plan or anything. Collegiate “neurosis rock” has been my bread and butter, too, and these guys made a higher grade than most, in large part because Travis Morrison came off like a guy with the desire and smarts to eventually overcome it. Another large part was that the band had chops - something that initially repulsed me when I saw them in ‘99 (the bassist was walking in place! the drummer had gloves! Pretty sure Sting was watching backstage with a tear in his eye!) but I’d grown to appreciate by the time they’d dropped this swan song.
The middle gets dour enough that I understand why Morrison wanted to bolt from this funk entirely, but indie seething rarely moves as confidently and acutely as “Following Through” and “Time Bomb.” Plus, bracketing the mid-album growls were numbers like the soaring “Superpowers,” welding hooks from “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” and “One Headlight” to imagery that does for me now what “King Of Pain” did in my precocious childhood, and “Ellen And Ben,” the life and death of an indie romance observed by a kind but gossipy pal with a taste for concrete nouns and clarity. Most people would be ecstatic if their twenty-something shitfits held up this well.
