Review:

on 2011-11-12 CharlesMartel Said:

Dismemberment Plan have established a reputation for writing songs with excellent lyrics. And this reputation has surely no firmer foundation than the songs on "Emergency and I". It is a pity then that such well-crafted words are not matched by an equally high standard of music. Just because you play in unusual time signatures does not mean you are automatically clever. Some time signatures are just not meant to be. Had they been, I could see this album as one of my all time favourites. As it is, I can just about listen to it on a good day. On a bad day I cannot bear it.

To start with, Morrison cannot sing. He has this sort of nasal whine which becomes really off-putting after a while and begins to grate. Then there are the melodies, or rather the complete lack of them. Now I know I go on like a broken record about melody, but seriously, without them many an album just ends up sounding like it was poorly put together by a bunch of kids whose familiarity with their instruments was sorely deficient. Occasionally, there is a good track here - "What Do You Want Me to Say" and "The City" being the obvious ones, but these are not enough, by themselves, to rescue the album from an otherwise poor rating.

The problem is, I feel, that somewhere inside "Emergency and I" is a great album waiting to get out, but one which is imprisoned in the failure of outcome to match ambition. This could have been so good, but in the end is not. Like a lot of stuff which came out at the end of the nineties, it doesn't seem to fit in anywhere and this shows in the way the band approach the music. There is nothing ground-breaking about "Emergency and I" which seems to wish to be a high point of its style, a style which has been done to death by thousands of others, without actually offering anything new. It is a musical statement which fails to make a statement.

The album fails to change my perception on any level. It is not an album which memory recalls easily and makes me want to play it again. When it is on, I can listen to it and enjoy bits here and there, but most of the time it fades into the background of whatever else I am doing. And when it ends, I can barely remember what any of it was like.
Rating: 5/10

Review:

on 2011-08-03 toughenuprob Said:

Originally released in 1999 on Desoto, The Dismemberment Plans groundbreaking third album has now been lovingly repackaged and reissued for 2011 on 180-gram vinyl by the lovely people at Barsuk. Its testament to the status of the band that a mere three weeks after the albums re-release on the 11th of January, Barsuk has already sold out of copies of the record. On revisiting the album, its really no surprise - once the charging chords at the heart of A Life of Possibilities kick in, its impossible not to smile and wonder at how you left this record on the shelf for so long. Even with the massive influx of emotional bands over the last decade, few have managed to pull off the kind of literate, post-grad sorrow present from Spider in the Snow through to The City without sounding clumsy and mawkish, especially when set to music containing so many unexpected chord changes and off-kilter rhythms. Anyone who ever thought cult darlings turned stadium superstars Biffy Clyro fantastically cutting edge on their 2nd and 3rd releases need only listen to Travis Morrisons frantic yelping and his bands discordant spasms on the likes of Memory Machine and I Love a Magician to see the D-Plans influence on the Scottish trio, not to mention on everyone from fellow D.C. natives Q and not U to current flavours of the week like Everything Everything. The ringing chorus of You Are Invited still sounds starry-eyed and wondrous twelve years from its first outing, and will probably still be bringing mile-wide grins to the faces of listeners old and new in another twelve. In the absence of any new releases from the sadly defunct outfit, the re-release of Emergency & I still provides twelve invitations to fall in love all over again.
Rating: 8/10