Change

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Title: Change
By: Dismemberment Plan, The
Released by: DeSoto
Released on: October 22, 2001
Rating (out of 10): 9
Date: 12/19/2001

The Silence After The Storm

Once again the politics of common sense: you do and I don’t / I could tell you it’s not true but what’s the use, it’s automatic. —“Automatic”

This epiphany comes partway through “Come Home” when the speaker’s dad informs him “common sense is such a scam.” And he’s right. It is dangerous to assume that any two individuals can share the same unspoken ideals. Common sense results in historic confusion. As an unspoken, unrecorded language, “common sense” not only changes from one age to the next, but also leaves the next era with little sense as to what the common knowledge and values were at the time. This may be the very reason why absolutely nothing is common about The Dismemberment Plan. They now prove this is the case, even within their own discography.

Yes, in many ways Change speaks for itself. Frontman Travis Morrison stated months before its release, that Change was to be a denser, more sophisticated album. It was to reveal itself slowly rather than throwing relentless punches. Their 1994 debut single boasted, “Can We Be Mature?” and though they have always been head-and-shoulders above anyone you might dare group in the same category, Change is the result of further experiment in maturity and sophistication. Not everything is as instrumentally explosive or as Jawbox/Brainiac influenced as before. We don’t get 1/16 of a beat cut off of each measure under apocalyptic rants. If anything, Change is their most refined work to date, but they have not for one moment lost their edge.

The instruments are solely a source of melody rather than shock value, as the extra-terrestrial organ is transformed into an atmospheric, airy yet consistent undertone throughout the album. The bass is more important than ever and its unconventional rhythms lead the album more consistently than the drums. This is because drummer Joe Easley has crafted the drum-set into a unique instrument capable of acting beyond a metronome and providing the most creative yet tight patterns in recent memory—capable of providing a cacophony of tom and cymbal beating and immediately falling into a consistent time-change.

And then the lyrics.

Morrison has always been noted for his stream-of-consciousness lyrical delivery, poetic personification and a clever combination of acute detail to a mundane reality intertwined with supernatural fantasy. This may be the one aspect in which The Dismemberment Plan has not changed.

“Face Of The Earth” documents a typical goodnight, until the speaker’s girlfriend is sucked skyward by a mysterious wind, never to be seen again. As if imagination wasn’t enough, the diction portrays Morrison’s unique storytelling with poetic detail:

That’s when I saw, I freeze the look of pre-alert and study it still
her smile starts to loosen, her pupils yawn wide and then she’s blown

The meter of “Secret Curse” make the lyrics an instrument in themselves as Morrison repeats:

Terrible blight
I’m deafened by sound
And blinded by light
Caught when I flee
And beat when I fight
And-cocky-when-wrong-and-I’m-timid-when-right-and-I-don’t-know
What Crimes have yet to come to light

The most emotionally intense song on the album, “Time Bomb” represents Morrison’s best use of metaphor to date, as a “lost soul,” ready to go Columbine, compares himself to a number of unlikely yet equally destructive phenomena. The desperation and determination in Morrison’s voice accompany the deceptive jangle-guitar and uneven pulsating drums while the bass thumps like a heart skipping beats, yet driving the song to its climax. “Time Bomb” is the new Dismemberment Plan. If “Pay For The Piano” beckons back to the excitement of !, “Time Bomb” bottles that freshness and excitement of the band’s spotlight and focuses it like a laser beam.

If Emergency & I was a smorgasbord pulled from a bag of tricks, Change is the cohesive, substantial entrée. “Sentimental Man” lulls us into a dreamlike state, which flows seamlessly into “Face Of The Earth.” “Time Bomb” leaves us bent over a cliff, waving our arms counterclockwise to keep our balance, until “The Other Side” sucks us through the same forest backwards, double-time.

Above all, what is most impressive is The Dismemberment Plan play by the rulebook this time around. Change is more 4/4 and melodic than anything they’ve released, yet they corrupt the system from the inside. Of course it sounds like nothing you’ve heard, but you wonder if it’s what you should have been hearing all along.

After the apocalypse that The Dismemberment Plan have been prophesying all these years, I hope this is the disc is what future civilizations uncover. In a world where only cockroaches will survive the world’s nukes, and we are forever subject to whirlwinds and fault lines, The Dismemberment Plan speak as a band on the top of their craft—who finally got it right for once. This is the consistent work by which we hope our culture will be understood and studied. In all the historic confusion that will result from our age, much could be learned from Morrison’s philosophic meter and the band’s groundbreaking sound. Common sense wouldn’t have it this way, but common sense doesn’t create great works of art.

© Copyright CultureDose.com 12/19/2001

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