Death Cab For Cutie and The Dismemberment Plan

What ever happend to alt-rock? By now you’d think lanky white twenty-somethings armed with cheap guitars, drum kits, lightweight keyboards, and the odd sampler would’ve more or less exhausted the possibilities. Think again. In different ways, both Washington state’s Death Cab for Cutie and Washington, DC’s Dismemberment Plan prove there’s still room for growth in the American indie rock marketplace, even if most of their peers are content to spend semester after semester in a dreary post-Archers of Loaf purgatory. True, you can hear Death Cab for Cutie’s pretty collegiate pop for free on Radio K any day of the week. But the Dismemberment Plan’s Change is a roundly rewarding album you prolly won’t hear on the airwaves here. The lowest common denominator between rock and rap isn’t Fred Durst. It’s urgent self-affirmation. Plan singer Travis Morrison flaunts his anxious affinity for everything from quirky art-core to lovelorn poetics to Public Enemy and D’Angelo, and he never fakes the funk. Even though they’ve opened for Pearl Jam, these guys are not rock stars, nor will they ever be. Which tells you, after nearly ten years of fiercely independent music-making, there’s lots more to them than a graduate-level interest in literature and a really bad name.