The Dismemberment Plan

The Ice Of Boston
Interscope, 1998

There's something not quite right about The Dismemberment Plan. Their songs sound like fizzy pop-rock frozen, shattered and glued back together at odd angles, with lyrics that bounce between whimsical and lonely. It can feel like watching a comical kid try to hide their grief: on their most popular album Emergency & I, a rocket-fuelled song about falling in love with a magician sits next to one about the horrors of anxiety and paranoia.

Sometimes the two themes meet, as in 'Memory Machine' from the same album, a sci-fi story about happy-making robots that alleviate everybody's pain. "Someday I know that happy will be all that matters," Travis Morrison sings, in a tone that suggests he wouldn't be welcome if it was. On 'The Ice Of Boston' he's both the narrator and the punchline, describing going a little crazy while spending New Year's Eve alone away from home. In spoken-word vocals he spits out the story of getting undressed, pouring champagne over himself and looking up to discover a bunch of strangers peering through the window. "I feel it cascade through my hair and across my chest and the phone rings," he rants at full-pace, before a terrible realisation slows him down: "... and its my mother."

The song ends on a sour note, but unlike on the band's other records there's no zany counterpoint that comes next: the other songs on The Ice Of Boston EP just trudge further into sad and introspective woods. Perhaps Morrison could only release them as B-sides, away from the world's expectations. 'The First Anniversary Of Your Last Phone Call' is mournful indie-rock that peaks with guitar like a giant, howling circular saw swinging to and fro across the microphone while the singer begs to be left alone. 'Just Like You' is a list of cutting remarks about someone, punctuated with feedback squeals.

It's strange to hear such terribly sad songs recorded by a band named after a joke in a Bill Murray film. The Plan broke up a few years after The Ice Of Boston EP, having recorded four studio albums. Morrison continued with a solo career under his own name.