Do You Remember The First Time? The Dismemberment Plan - The City

In this semi-regular feature, I reminisce on the song which, if not introducing me to an artist for the first time, made some kind of indelible and irreversible impact on me.

For this first entry, I have decided to coincide it with the news of the reunion of The Dismemberment Plan. The Washington DC band have announced they will be playing together for the first time since their brief 2007 reunion for selected dates across the U.S., but have hinted that there may be more to come from them. Here's a full list:

(all in Jan 2011)

21/01 Washington, DC - Black Cat
22/01 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
27/01 Philadelphia, PA - Starlight Ballroom
28/01 Boston, MA - Paradise
29/01 New York, NY - Webster Hall

30/01 New York, NY - Webster Hall

I have to admit, my first experience with the D-Plan was not an entirely enjoyable one. Listening to 1999’s Emergency & I  (to be reissued next January) for the first time, there was no question that there was something a bit different about them, but their mixture of gurgling keyboards, perplexing time signatures, emo vocals and nagging guitars just didn’t gel with me initially. But The City, the album’s anthem and centrepiece, was a song I could instantly take to: it’s whirring synths, steady stabs of guitar, the pattering drums  all the while building up to that moment of release when Travis Morrision screams “since you’ve been goooooooone”.

It was enough to make me return to the album a year or two later, and sure enough everything made much more sense second time around. Sure, Morrison’s vocals may be “emo”, but they’re without that irritating nasal tone one associates with the genre, and he possesses a vocal range and versatility that left most of his contemporaries standing. Lyrically too, he was streets ahead; “I’ve lost my membership card to the human race/so don’t forget the face/’cus I know that I do belong here” he sings monotonically on What Do You Want Me To Say. This versatility can be applied to the record as a whole too; from the rollercoaster choruses of Gyroscope and 8 1/2 Minutes, to the deranged likes of Girl O' Clock and I Love A Magician, and the unnerving atmospherics of The Jitters, Emergency & I is a stellar collection of songs. Now with the D-Plan's re-union, I feel added impetus to add to that sole entry in my collection.

Listen to This City by The Dismemberment Plan on the "Hear The Secret" music player!