Sleeve notes
The Dismemberment Plan
Emergency & I · 1999
The Dismemberment Plan formed in Washington, D.C. in 1993, part of a DC underground scene shaped heavily by Dischord Records' post-hardcore ethos even as the band's own sound pulled in almost every direction at once: funk basslines, dance rhythms, post-hardcore dynamics, and Travis Morrison's conversational, often very funny lyrics about the specific anxieties of being young and directionless. Few bands of the era combined that much stylistic range while still sounding like a coherent whole.
Emergency & I (1999) is generally considered the band's defining achievement, an album that moves fluidly between the manic and the devastated without ever losing its identity. The Dismemberment Plan broke up in 2003 to comparatively little fanfare, but the record's reputation grew substantially in the years after, its restless genre-blending and Morrison's unusually direct emotional writing becoming a clear reference point for the more eclectic wing of 2000s indie rock. The band reunited periodically in the years that followed, including for new recordings.
