The Dismemberment Plan, "The Face of the Earth"

A supernatural event, or just a guy getting ghosted?

Century Songs is a deep dive into the songs that have meant the most to me in the 21st Century so far, 2000-present. The songs are not ranked, and I’ll be writing about whichever ones seem right that week. For an overview of the project, click here.

I saw The Dismemberment Plan at the Metro in Chicago in 2002, on a co-headlining tour with Death Cab for Cutie called, appropriately enough, “The Death and Dismemberment Tour.” Cursory internet research suggests the tickets were $12. I don’t recall much of the show, but in my hazy memory, D-Plan frontman Travis Morrison was at one point swinging from the rafters, although that seems incredibly unlikely. The Metro may occasionally oversell its capacity (remind me to tell you all about my Joe Strummer experience sometime) but I don’t think they would let a performer literally climb the ceiling. But then, that’s the way I remember this band: experimental, ambitious, unpredictable.

The Dismemberment Plan formed in 1993 in Washington, D.C., releasing their first album, !, in 1995 in the thick of the city’s post-Fugazi hardcore scene. That first record is brash and screamy, but the band’s core 90s sound is there, beginning to take shape in time for 1997’s The Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified. On that record, the shouts are toned down, synthesizers and odd time signatures abound, and Morrison’s songwriting takes a huge leap forward. In “The Ice of Boston,” one of their best early songs, he talk-sings about being alone on New Year’s Eve, drinking bottle after bottle of champagne, standing naked and listening to the sounds of the city and contemplating another lonely year. The only interruption is a phone call from his mom.

Dry wit and self-deprecation are two of the things I most gravitate toward when it comes to songwriting and pop music in general, and D-Plan did this better than most. As their profile grew steadily beyond their local scene—I can recall seeing “The Ice of Boston” and the absolutely frantic “Manipulate Me” on random punk comps in the 90s—they signed to Interscope to record their masterpiece, 1999’s Emergency & I. The band clashed a bit with the label, fighting against typical mainstream A&R bloat, and after releasing a lone EP, Interscope dropped them, freeing them to take the record back to their local home label, DeSoto.

Major label drama aside, Emergency & I was a massive underground success, earning a glowing 9.6 review on Pitchfork and allowing the band to level up significantly by opening for Pearl Jam on the Binaural tour in 2000. Morrison has spoken bout the influence Pearl Jam had on the band on that tour, pushing them to play heavier and learning a lot about what kind of band they were going to be heading into a new century. This uncertainty and newfound attention shifted their identity as a band and informed their musical themes and songwriting goals as they prepared their follow-up, 2001’s Change.

Change turned out to be appropriately titled. The Plan pumped the brakes a bit, letting the moodier elements that dotted their 90s records drive the record and writing honest-to-goodness riffs*. It’s not difficult to hear Pearl Jam’s influence on something like “Time Bomb,” and while Morrison sounds nothing like Eddie Vedder, the melody builds to a crescendo that wouldn’t be out of place on a 2000s PJ record. It’s those strange, ambitious moments on Change that are the most fascinating to me, and “The Face of the Earth” is where form and content adhere the most. (In fact, Morrison has also called this his favorite Plan song, so he and I are in agreement there.)

*This is an unapologetically pro-riff Substack.

“As kisses go, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.” (A+ opening line, by the way.) We’re dropped into a romantic moment, but one that feels mundane and already winding down. A date, perhaps, and a routine goodnight kiss. She turns to leave, then stops and smiles… and then, Morrison sings, “everything seemed to shift.”

From there, it’s not entirely clear what happens, but you know how in the Talking Heads song “And She Was” a woman suddenly just starts, y’know, floating? And by the end of the song she’s still just flying around, the world moving and she’s right there with it? And how there’s a freedom in that, and the woman is confused but never afraid, even as she “joins the world of missing persons?” Whatever supernatural event allowed the unnamed woman of “And She Was” to levitate herself out of ordinary life seems to be happening again to poor Travis’ date.

There’s no noise, no wind, nothing at all to suggest that something otherworldly, perhaps biblical is taking place. One second she’s there, and the next she’s gone.

“And that’s when I saw
I freeze the look of pre-alert and study it still
Her smile starts to loosen, her pupils yawn wide
And then she’s blown from the face of the Earth”

Morrison stands in frozen horror as she is violently ripped skyward, “limbs flailing like an unloved marionette at impossible speed.” He watches her, “turning end on end, looming like a long-lost astronaut,” and then she disappears from view. After this unknowable, supernatural event is over, it’s quiet and still. All he can hear is birds, leaves. After that, what else is there to do?

We all worry sometimes, I think, whether anyone really loves us, and the loneliness and self-doubt of “The Ice of Boston” can still be found in Morrison’s writing on Change. It’s possible that the woman he kisses in the beginning of the song does not literally fly into the sky and disappear; it’s much more likely that she simply ghosted him. An ordinary kiss inevitably takes on new meaning when you realize it was the last one. Perhaps imagining she was suddenly and without warning raptured into the heavens is preferable to acknowledging she simply walked out of your life without saying goodbye. So maybe you open another bottle of champagne and listen to the wind.

Then again, maybe it’s not that big of a deal after all. People come and go all the time, and all we can do is keep going.

“I never really knew the way she lived her life
I tried a couple numbers, but they never called back
I didn’t know her family or friends at all
With no one to call, and summer turning to fall
I gave up”

I’ve gone on about the lyrical content of the song, but despite all that it usually takes me a long time to even get around to paying attention to lyrics. I am first and foremost a melody guy, and most of the songs I’ll write about are likely going to be, if not catchy, then at least something you can nod your head to. “Face of the Earth” opens with that almost new age-y strumming, but it’s the tightly controlled muted guitar hits and the unusual time signature* that lodge themselves in my brain.

*I don’t know anything about time signatures—I haven’t listened to nearly enough Rush for that—but I know it’s not your usual 4/4.

The song builds a sense of urgency as Travis tells his story, and then at precisely the halfway point, everything drops out except the vocals: “And then she’s blown from the face of the earth.” Then, chaos.

I wouldn’t have guessed it before choosing to write about this song, but in addition to Pearl Jam (and, interestingly enough, D’Angelo’s Voodoo), a major influence on Change was nü-metal, especially bands like Deftones and System of a Down, which were of course everywhere in the late 90s/early 00s. In hindsight, I can certainly hear the influence of something like “Toxicity” on “Face of the Earth,” particularly in those manic chords describing her final moments. It’s form and function, unified in telling a singular story, unlike much else that was going on at the time, or since.

After Change and “the Death and Dismemberment Tour,” the Plan broke up. Travis Morrison tried his hand at a solo career and bassist Eric Axelson started Maritime with members of the Promise Ring. They reunited a few times, even releasing one more album in 2013, Uncanny Valley, which I confess I’ve not made much time for. For me, those 90s records set the stage for Change, and that weird, wonderful show at the Metro. Even if they weren’t literally swinging from the ceiling, musically it sure felt like it.

Next week: Hard drinking, hard drugs, and rumination on the books of the Bible