Beandon’s Musical Corner: The Dismemberment Plan’s Travis Morrison on Chappell Roan, Sci-Fi and the Internet
“I was actually born at Stanford,” said Travis Morrison, lead singer and songwriter for the legendary indie rock band The Dismemberment Plan (the D-Plan), as he randomly interjects while we take a seat at a breakfast diner in Downtown Las Vegas. I was there for Best Friends Forever, an emo music festival where Morrison’s band headlined the night before — one of their first shows in over a decade. The above exchange is characteristic of our two-hour-long conversation: casual, freewheeling and weird as hell. (As far as I can tell, he has never mentioned this Stanford connection before.)
My history with the band goes back almost a decade. For as long as I can remember, “Emergency & I” has been my favorite record: sonically, lyrically and emotionally, it is a towering achievement of rock music, nay, music. The album, which earned a coveted 10/10 rating from Pitchfork, turns 25 this year, and the D-Plan are currently touring in celebration of this magnum opus.
While we were set to meet at a coffee shop, he requested a change of venue due to an omlet craving. I concurred. The resulting conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.
The Stanford Daily [TSD]: As I just found out, you were born at Stanford Hospital! However, you grew up in D.C. Tell me more about that upbringing.
Travis Morrison [TM]: I mean it’s a government town, it’s a capital town. But then, historically, it was also a small, southern, majority Black city. So, on one level, it was the so-called “capital of the Western world” and, on another level, it was Memphis. The way the two of those existed together and don’t exist together: it’s pretty crazy. You know, the city isn’t based on trade, it isn’t based on industry, it isn’t based on agriculture. In other words, it wasn’t based on trapping and furring. It’s just government. It’s not dangerous or progressive or radical at all.
Honestly, the city that really reminds me of D.C. is Los Angeles. With both, the currency is proximity to people. Money’s not that important in Washington: no one’s that impressed if you’re rich. It’s who’s on your speed dial. The networking! Just to an unholy, revolting, psychopathic extent.
TSD: You’re returning to touring after a decade off, and you’re seeing not only bands that you’re already friends with, but some newer bands as well. Where do you think the D-Plan slots in with the contemporary music scene?
TM: I’m fascinated with how radical changes in modern music consumption have changed the generational handing down of ideas. Ageism in music has really ended, which is shocking. And I just barely observed that starting at the end of the D-Plan’s first run. The internet basically destroyed ageism. Rock and roll used to be, “don’t trust anyone over 30.” In the aughts, that changed. If you look at that book, “Meet Me in the Bathroom,” the focus of the book is the Strokes, who were kids. The Interpol kids were the classic give-it-a-whirl-after-college band. Everybody else was a 30-year-old lifer! LCD Soundsystem, TV on the Radio, The Hold Steady. There were also a whole bunch of bands they didn’t talk about, like Battles, the Rens, etc. But, with streaming, kids are taking music in flat — without all of this tribalism or these age-related discussions.
TSD: There’s more objectivity, in other words.
TM: That just took me like 15 minutes to say: objectivity! The loss of tribalism brings a little bit of melancholy for me. At the same time, good riddance! The D-Plan were a Napster band. People liked to discover us with their headphones on by themselves because it’s eccentric. And maybe if you’ve got a group of people around you, one person could be like, “this is kind of weird.” And then group dynamics kick in, and you turn it off. But if you’re on your own and you’re just kind of flipping through things, you can kind of “get with” our spirit of eccentricity. When we came up, we were more comfortable with mixing the high brow with bad taste. We were very comfortable with pop. We were comfortable with humor.
TSD: Let’s move to music. In “Face of the Earth” or “You are Invited,” you invent a sci-fi framing device to insert into a real-life, emotional situation: a sudden supernatural event or a magical letter, respectively. It reminds me of the magical realism of someone like Borges. Where does your inspiration to write come from?
TM: I only now have gotten into Philip K. Dick, but I was really into Ray Bradbury at that time. I read Robert Heinlein as a kid, and I got back into him. This isn’t magical realism at all, but Guy de Maquassant, I was really into him. I also love Mark Twain. With short stories, you kind of have to invent a circumstance because there’s not a lot of time. Twain kind of just comes up with a plausible scenario and runs with it.
TSD: It’s the same thing in music, too.
TM: Right. This song can only be so long. I’ve got you for four minutes, so, I’ll do something and see if you buy it.
TSD: I was listening to “Back and Forth”: “So in the end, whatever, we die, we dissolve / Equations unbalanced, riddles unsolved / And we were never connected or involved / Except for the intersections and crazy mathematics / With no time and no space and no schedule and no place.” This struck me as Pynchonian.
TM: Yes, that is very much what Thomas Pynchon does. You find out at the end of the novel that none of it really means anything. He kind of tricks you: you think it’s all about plot, but it’s really about setting.
TSD: That’s true of songs, too: they’re not about plot. They’re about setting and vibe.
TM: That’s a very good point. I would say this is especially true of [Bob] Dylan. He was trying to transcend past, present and future and just hit you with the whole feeling at once.
TSD: I think of something like “Sad Eyed Lady of the Low-Lands.”
TM: Exactly! He gets into a collapsed space, and then just kind of modulates you around it. It’s coherent, but it’s also kind of discombobulating. I don’t think that really existed in Western song before him.
TSD: I feel like I’ve spotted “word painting” in a lot of D-Plan arrangements. On one level it’s the odd time signatures, which embody a sense of anxiety. In “Gyroscope,” you clip off a beat at the end and turn a standard 4/4 beat into 15/16: it’s almost normal, but there’s something off (like the lyrics). In “8 1/2 Minutes,” you make the synth a nuclear siren.
TM: That’s definitely there and comes from being in the studio. It’s almost like careful sound-effect or production work that ties into the lyrics. I haven’t done that in quite a while, but I do have thoughts on it in contemporary music, though. Like everybody else, I have been obsessed with the new Chappell Roan record. She’ll also do sound effects: the album is an incredibly dense production. Kind of like how, with 50s and 60s novelty music, you would have these records with foley, such as “sounds of the surf” ocean noises. … Someone like Zappa kind of continued that. In a weird way, Zappa was very old fashioned and kind of vaudevillian. For all of his complications, I don’t think of him as modern. He’s not Kraftwerk or Giorgio Moroder.
TSD: There’s not much industrial about him.
TM: Right. He’s very much not post-industrial. He’s a little bit of a Dutch master. Like Vermeer, maybe. Very ornate. That’s really funny to think about: “Anyway, now that we’ve figured out Zappa!” But really, I think reason number two—out of a million—as to why I am fascinated with the Chappell Roan record is that I initially found it too “white girl” for me. But then I realized it was a tactic. There’s a story arc in there about being this Midwest Princess, and it ties into the music and the lyrical references. And as someone from Virginia, who lives in North Carolina, I found it a relatable way to indicate that she doesn’t want to sell out. They eat Papa John’s, not some coal-oven margarita pizza!
TSD: What’s next for the D-Plan?
TM: Well, nothing, at least for the next year and a half. The drummer is a software engineer for NASA, and he’s on call because they have a launch in two years.
TSD: Isn’t that awesome to say about your bandmate?
TM: To be playing music while also having these rich, fulfilling lives: it’s a blessing.
TSD: Are any new D-Plan songs being written?
TM: No.
TSD: Are you working on any songs at all?
TM: I am, personally, working on a record! Very slowly. I had a young family, so that took a lot of time, but there have been sessions. I have varying degrees of happiness with it. There is some perfectionism. People were like, “Don’t be too hard on yourself.” But, you know what? I’m gonna be really hard on myself!
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