Pitchfork

[Posted Monday, September 8th, 2003 03:00:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

The Dismemberment Plan is k-put (for now). They officially played their last show as a band at Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club last week and have moved on to other things, as previously reported in this hallowed archive. This reporter was lucky enough to have been there, and it was outstanding-- something like a homecoming dance, with familiar faces returning from school or with their families, while a few X-marked underclassmen tried to score beer, but had to settle for Red Bull. Corps of Atlantans, Chicagoans, Pacific Northwesterners, and Californians represented their cliques with signs and shouts between songs. But it was really the District-area fanboys and ladies that showed up in full effect with parents, producers, labelmates, ex-girlfriends, and tons of other familiar faces from around the local scene. And as a result, the Plan was really, really on that night. Travis Morrison left his trombone at home, but managed to sneak Christina Aguilera and the Humpty Dance on stage. Eric Axelson and Joe Easley remain the tightest rhythm section on the planet. Jason Caddell even momentarily setaside his guitar/keys double-duty to actually take the mic for a special dedication to friends visiting from Colorado.

As a final thank-you to the fans, the Dismemberment Plan have accompanied their goodbyes with an astounding amount of free music on their site, including RealAudio streams of all four of their studio albums, MP3's of a few rare and out-of-print nuggets, and even a full-album preview of the upcoming remix album A People's History of The Dismemberment Plan (in doing so revealing a tracklist ever so slightly different than the one we reported back in May):

01 The Face of the Earth [Parae remix]
02 What Do You Want Me To Say? [Drop Dynasty remix]
03 Academy Award [Cex remix]
04 Following Through [Cynyc remix]
05 The Other Side [Justin Norvell remix]
06 Life of Possibilities [Noise McCartney remix]
07 Pay for the Piano [Grandmaster Incongruous remix]
08 Time Bomb [ASCDI remix]
09 Automatic [Deadverse remix]
10 The City [Ev remix]
11 The Jitters [Ender remix]
12 Superpowers [Erik Gundel remix]

The actual, factual CD drops September 24th on DeSoto. In his final missive on the D-Plan dotcom, Morrison namechecks his influences and showers his groupies with love like a pro: "Thanks to everyone that came out. Ever. Now go start a band and figure out where we went wrong and build on that-- it's how music works. I still can't believe we got away with taking the ideas of Moonshake, Trenchmouth, Brainiac and Candy Machine to the bank, but I'll take it... I think this year has been a brilliant way to end things. Ex Sex is the best."