The Dismemberment Plan played their last show at the beginning of September in their hometown of Washington D.C. And then they were done. Over. Dead.
The eclectic punk-funk fugitives, who once proved themselves too smart to be grouped into any one scene, are now releasing a post-mortem remix album. The People’s History of the Dismemberment Plan is not the sort of remix album that screams career-end, pathetical, money-grabbing posers. This comp is more revolutionary, more important than that.
The band began by posting its entire music catalog online and asking for fans and friends to remix them of their own accord, with the favorite revamped songs landing a spot on a new album. And then the Plan members sat back and waited for submissions to roll in.
In this time of strict copyright infringements and Internet music paranoia, a non-concept album made from the fragments of a dead band (one of the best in the last ten years) by a slew of professional and amateur musicians creates a sense of community that major labels and scenester wannabes alike will never harness.
The album is consistent in neither style nor genre, leaping from big-beat dance tunes to post-punk ditties, but the attitude and inspiration remain fixed. This was a band that people loved and a band that loved its fans back, and any faux-celebrity was simple par for the course. The Dismemberment Plan did open for long-time fans Pearl Jam on one overseas tour.
Parae, an artist who had never heard a song by the Plan, created the A People’s History‘s first track, “The Face of the Earth (“super” soniq remix).” The track is mostly vocal snippets and percussive guitar hits edited into oblivion, creating an entirely new hyper-melody. The fuzzed out end-chorus bleeds emotion, without the presence of a single intelligible vocal.
An interpretation of “Pay for the Piano” bleaches Travis Morrison’s distinct vocals over a cut-‘n’-paste barrage of samples, including perfectly-fitted clippings from Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up.” Ev (from 12 Rods and Halloween, Alaska) remakes “The City” into a barren landscape of distorted bass, trancing piano and a lounge trumpet drenched in rewound percussion and reverb. “There’s no one to know/Nothing to do/The city’s been dead/Since you’ve been gone,” Morrison sings before describing his rooftop view and an infatuation with the people’s lives below. The remix truly embodies the lyrics as he “feel[s] like a wave’s picked me up and carried me away.”
The superb “Superpowers” from the Plan’s 1999 Change, is transformed into the acoustic planet of a self-reflective superhero bent with disillusionment and singing to himself over the eerily repeated guitar part of The Faces’ “Ooh La La.”
Tgierbeat6 superstar Cex re-imagines “Academy Award” into an effectively jittery scurry of dissembled yaps and compact disc skip noises. Members of Quruli reassemble “Life of Possibilities” into a meditative reverie of French disco keys and a droning tribal throb with lyrics that evoke a victim of endless apathy, a Dismemberment Plan favorite theme: “it’s endless it’s mapless/No compass, no north star.”
“Time Bomb” tumbles a troubled narrator into a realm of misty guitar clamoring and deconstructed drumbeats as he proclaims, “I only live in that moment when she died.” But the narrator’s horrible bleakness fades into beautiful melody and the genius of Morrison’s ability at turning a phrase.
Apart from the overly monotone incantations of “Automatic (Deadverse Remix),” every track is a successful reinterpretation. Sometimes, like on “What Do You Want Me To Say?” an originally underspoken bit of harmony is brought to the forefront and an entirely new song is created.
While they were active, the Dismemberment Plan raised the bar for “emo” bands with their diversity, drawing upon hardcore, spoken word, funk and the infusion jams of D.C. Go Go. A People’s History of the Dismemberment Plan demonstrates the true power of a great band and the power of their fans.
Grade: A
