Dismemberment Plan "Change" poll

my rough ranking would be:

The Other Side > Following Through > Superpowers > Come Home > Ellen And Ben > Sentimental Man > Face Of The Earth > Pay For The Piano > Time Bomb > Secret Curse > Automatic

definitely an album where side 2 is better than side 1

Time Bomb > Face Of The Earth > Sentimental Man > Superpowers > Secret Curse > Ellen And Ben > Come Home > Following Through > The Other Side > Automatic > Pay For The Piano

there is a small gradient here imo. this is a super consistent album that onyl suffers in comparison to E&I by not having the same peaks.

def Superpowers.

are there any instrumentals

I don't remember when this album came out, but it's one of the last I associate with the pre-Internet music era. Dismemberment Plan played on Terre T's "Cherry Blossom" radio show on WFMU sometime in '00 (?) and played a set of "Emergency & I" tunes with some new ones thrown in. I taped it and would play "Time Bomb" over and over looking forward to the new album. Now, it's the only song I remember from this disc!

Ha - just Googled it, and WFMU has a record of the performance. LOL @ the last track...:

The Dismemberment Plan live in session, 4/27/00 (engineer: Jesse Cannon)
???
Spider In The Snow
???
What Do You Want Me To Say?
The City
You Are Invited
???
The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich
???
???
???/Back That Azz Up

i hated "Time Bomb" when they started playing it live, warmed up to it by the time they dropped the album but then was kind of disappointed by the studio recording.

"The Other Side" is a big one for me because for a couple years the Dismemberment Plan was my favorite D.C. band and Lake Trout was my favorite Baltimore band and I'd see both live all the time, then suddenly they started playing shows together and the Plan wrote a song as a Lake Trout homage, thought that was really cool

they always used to close sets with "OK Joke's Over" with improv bits at the end often quoting rap songs

I had thought of these guys as kind of a novelty band thanks to songs like "Do the Standing Still" and "The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich!" (I was a dork and in high school), so I was really mad when Change came out. Very mad because it wasn't funny! It especially wasn't funny in a dorky high school way. It made me hate breakup albums. When I heard Sea Change (different guy's album) was a breakup album, I didn't even listen to it, that's how mad I was at Change. I know this makes no sense. I went to the tour anyway and got a shirt that says "Dismemberment Plan Enjoys A Great Butt," which I thought was very funny! It had the word butt on it.

yeah i kinda feel like they worked too hard at making this their 'mature departure point album' and jettisoning a lot of fun stuff. "Gets Rich" was written around the same time but they decided to just leave it as a standalone single, would've been a nice change of pace here, although i have no idea where it'd fit in the running order tbh.

are there any instrumentals
seems to be the most common criticism i've heard from people who just weren't into it.. the vocals have never really bothered me personally.

For me it's "The Other Side" vs "Superpowers" .. very tough call

dig this album for the most part.

feel like the single was "face of the earth"? at least that's the one they played on the college radio station by me. so i probably heard that one first.

but i also really like "sentimental man," which always sort of reminded me of, like, drum-n-bass steely dan.

but you know i always kind of hated "ellen and ben," with its bleep-bloop casio and "hands in the air" end-of-album mawkishness.

Face Of The Earth, by some distance, though I like everything here.

In the very early days of Stylus when we still had licence to write about stuff up to 12 months old, this was one of the first records I wrote about. For me DPlan are about the first Internet-era band. I heard about them online, saw no paper press coverage in the UK, had to get the albums via Amazon import.

i remember talking to ryan schreiber on my porch ca. 2001 about how the dismemberment plan were like the Next Big Thing in indie. it was like '90s indie was over. pavement was done. this was the new wave.

Time Bomb > Face Of The Earth > Sentimental Man > Superpowers > Secret Curse > Ellen And Ben > Come Home > Following Through > The Other Side > Automatic > Pay For The Piano

― Roberto Spiralli, Saturday, November 6, 2010 6:29 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

This is pretty OTM.

I like Pay For The Piano ok.. Is it really last place for this album?

i remember talking to ryan schreiber on my porch ca. 2001 about how the dismemberment plan were like the Next Big Thing in indie. it was like '90s indie was over. pavement was done. this was the new wave.

Ha, well he was right in a way.

Face of The Earth is one of my favourite songs ever. The two chord intro when it starts to rock and the same piece at the end when he 'Na Na Na Nas' over it. Bliss

That and Time Bomb, Sentimental Man and Following through (although where I'm from that refers to a shitty accident, which detracts)

This album is so good and a great progression for them. I was eagerly awaiting their follow up......

Time Bomb > Face Of The Earth > Sentimental Man > Superpowers > Secret Curse > Ellen And Ben > Come Home > Following Through > The Other Side > Automatic > Pay For The Piano

― Roberto Spiralli, Saturday, November 6, 2010 6:29 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

This is pretty OTM.

― Tim. E "LazRus" Lucas (Prose b4 Hoes...and Big Hoos), Saturday, November 6, 2010 6:14 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

This is pretty OTM.

i remember talking to ryan schreiber on my porch ca. 2001 about how the dismemberment plan were like the Next Big Thing in indie. it was like '90s indie was over. pavement was done. this was the new wave.

Ha, well he was right in a way.

― Captain Ostensible (Scik Mouthy), Saturday, November 6, 2010 3:21 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

kinda, in the sense that for a couple years there were a lot of punky bands trying to guilt-trip people into dancing, but i feel like within a few years Pavement-type indie's dominance was again assured

I dunno, im not sure how much of a shadow over the 00s Pavement cast. I think The Strokes and Neutral Milk Hotel are bigger shadows.

At the time I would've said 'Time Bomb', now it's between 'The Other Side' and 'Following Through'. The drumming on 'The Other Side' might win it. Agree with Some Dude about the second half being stronger, though I love the whole thing really.

glad to see so much love for "The Other Side" -- always been one of my favorites, which I thought was kind of a minority view, but it looks like I was wrong -- I know some people (maybe just pitchfork?) weren't into the lyrics, or the T-Mo persona on this album in general (less goofy, more 'mature', etc), but I never had a problem with 'em -- then again, I was like 15 when I first heard Emergency & I, so that shit already sounded pretty 'mature' to me compared to Offspring and Bad Religion and whatever else I was into -- also remember Pfork complaining about Travis's "emotive yeahs", which is still a funny idea (and maybe sort of contradicts the "D-Plan all grown up" reading?)

and I always liked how quiet and close the vocals sounded. it was partly the production, partly the lyrics, partly the delivery; it was reflective, unguarded, a little weird. like a voice in my head, or a whisper in my ear. but all the voice would ever say is "yeah-yeah, yeeaaaaahhhhh."
(in retrospect, parts of Emergency & I anticipated this development)

but you know i always kind of hated "ellen and ben," with its bleep-bloop casio and "hands in the air" end-of-album mawkishness.

― jaymc, Saturday, November 6, 2010 5:38 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark

[I always interpreted it as the narrator telling this story in the course of chatting up/hitting on a former mutual acquaintance, into whom he has just run, and who, at some point in their conversation, has asked after ellenandben; this reading has the virtue, I think, of bringing out a certain pathos of the absurd, an ironic (but not totally cynical!) distance between 'the author' and this whole world of messed-up lonely characters. what happens when (stories about) other people's failed relationships become the gossipy grist for your own lovemill? "... and then they never spoke to each other again. eh, you know how it goes, so do I, but still, maybeifyou'renotdoinganythingthisweekend...?" -- I can't go on, I'll go on]

[[and then again, listening to it after the band broke up, I found yet another level of pathos (metapathos?) in the fact that this weird, banal, seemingly so un-Planlike song had unexpectedly become THE LAST DISMEMBERMENT PLAN SONG EVER -- like they hadn't really been maturing, just getting tired, their energy dwindling, approaching the point of no return, and all the while we kept giving them the benefit of the doubt because we just liked them so dang much]]

probably should've tried out my new dash-heavy posting style on the other thread before employing it in a long post about my favorite band -- turned out less readable than I expected -- still, I will let it stand, as an outgrowth of my unabashed enthusiasm and love for these dudes and this album

okay somebody on internet lyrics website songmeanings.net already put some of this stuff better than I could:

I really like the irony in that final line -- "You know I would love a surprise." The narrator of this song seems like a fairly unambitious guy, stuck in the rat race, "trying to keep [his] eyes on the prize, you know how it goes." Ellen and Ben seem to represent unabashed romance in all its messy, self-destructive glory, and our narrator is really put off by it. Yet he tells himself, and us, that he's the kind of guy who likes surprises, spontaneity, fun things.

It's that old conflict between keeping your head above water and letting your heart do what it wants. It's something the Plan was concerned with from its first album, and I just think it's fitting that all those tensions are summed up in the last song and the last line of the band's career.

SUPERPOWERS! Despite sounding a bit like a "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You"/"One Headlight" hybrid. Or because of it.

nice to see some love for "Superpowers." I don't really like the chorus, the dramatic chord change, or really the lyrics in general (although "lonely guy watchin X-Men thinkin baout things" is a great premise for a song), but the main groove and the "Flight of the Bumblebee" guitar solo still make it one of my favorite parts of the album. i hear the Wallflowers comparison but not so much the Sting one.

I had thought of these guys as kind of a novelty band thanks to songs like "Do the Standing Still" and "The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich!" (I was a dork and in high school), so I was really mad when Change came out. Very mad because it wasn't funny! It especially wasn't funny in a dorky high school way. It made me hate breakup albums. When I heard Sea Change (different guy's album) was a breakup album, I didn't even listen to it, that's how mad I was at Change. I know this makes no sense. I went to the tour anyway and got a shirt that says "Dismemberment Plan Enjoys A Great Butt," which I thought was very funny! It had the word butt on it.

― 17th Century Catholic Spain (Abbbottt), Friday, November 5, 2010 4:17 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha this was like the opposite of me. I was a snotty old-school d-plan fan so I would get annoyed at the dudes at the college radio station who would only play "ice of boston" because it was funny while ignoring the "deep cuts"

I don't remember a lot of the songs on Change but I'll vote for Time Bomb

oh and I had (and might still have) the "...is Terrified"-era "Dismemberment Plan: Favorite Rock Band" t-shirt

one time I was wearing it in Tacoma Park, Md., around like 1996 and this guy started talking to me about how much he liked the Dismemberment Plan and how they were going to be really big, and it turned out to be the drummer from Jawbox. FANTASTIC STORY.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

sentimental man>superpowers>following through>face of the earth>the other side, ish

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

only one for ellen and fucking ben

weird results! I never really payed much attention to "The Face of the Earth" — I mean yeah it's obviously a good song, but sandwiched in between two sonically-similar and (imho) even better tracks.

yeah "face of the earth" is a lil overrated but i'm kinda just glad something other than "time bomb" won.

SUPERPOWERS! Despite sounding a bit like a "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You"/"One Headlight" hybrid. Or because of it.

omg I never heard that before, but you're totally right on, and if anything this just makes me love Superpowers even more.

goddammit, if i'd seen this post earlier there'd be at least one vote for pay for the piano. it's not the best song on the album, but it's the one song that can come up on shuffle and i'll be like FUCK YEAH and start dancing.

this is a super consistent album that onyl suffers in comparison to E&I by not having the same peaks.

otm. sometimes i like it better than E&I, because there's that element of languor that bernard snowy mentioned -- a sense of winding down, low-level depression, etc. like "the jitters" is for when you're can't-leave-the-house depressed, but the through-line of "change" is for when it's winter and the days get darker earlier and you're kind of ruminating on your regrets.

except pay for the piano which is "fuck everything let's dance."

if this is your favorite dismemberment plan album, i will fight you

the dismemberment plan album for people whose favorite song on emergency & i is "ice of boston"

zing

lol

i love this album but i definitely side eye people who don't like Is Terrified more (or haven't even heard it)

I side-eye anybody who gets pious about their favorite d-plan album

it's weird bc "the city" is prob the best song on E&I and maybe the best d plan song and "change" is an album of songs that sound like "the city" but the whole thing is so boring

you guys keep side-eying and your faces are gonna get stuck that way

this is my favorite d-plan album but I will not fight you, for you are the lucky duck who still likes '90s indie-emo spazz and there's so much out there to revisit, go chase down some on spotify and let me have my calmer, shoulda-been-on-a-major "maturity move." "Superpowers," yes, this is why Travis Morrison gets to call himself the "Darryl Hall of Park Slope" on twitter.

I love every single album by this band. This one is my night-time favorite.