Artist The Dismemberment Plan

In the band’s early recordings—most notably its 1999 breakthrough, Emergency & I—The Dismemberment Plan embraced (and later embodied) D.C.’s late-’90s post-punk scene, blasting out spastic, funk-laced rock with a backhanded fuck-the-world twang. But one thing has always set D-Plan apart from its contemporaries: Travis Morrison. Few, if any, post-punk frontmen have ever had a way with words quite like Morrison, penning lyrics that cut to the core of human experience in an insightful, witty tone. Morrison and his bandmates have settled into their post-Plan lives after an amicable 2003 break-up—they now work for The Huffington Post, Rock The Vote, and NASA—but they aren’t against the occasional reunion show: They’re on the road now commemorating Barsuk Records’ deluxe release of Emergency & I­­, which, oddly enough, is getting the vinyl treatment for the first time.

Updated 02/07/2011