Beloved Washington, D.C.-reared rockers the Dismemberment Plan concluded a brief, seven-show reunion last night (Oct. 25) at the inaugural United Sounds festival at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, N.Y., capping frontman Travis Morrison, bassist/keyboardist Eric Axelson, guitarist/keyboardist Jason Caddell and drummer Joe Easley’s first performances together since New Year’s Eve 2014.
Ostensibly a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Plan’s classic third album Emergency & I, the shows largely focused on that material but have also dipped into prior and subsequent releases such as 2001’s Change and the 2013 comeback album Uncanney Valley. At Pioneer Works, the audience was bopping up and down from the first seconds of opener “A Life of Possibilities” and even burst into spontaneous rhythmic clapping at the end of “Following Through,” much to Morrison’s amusement.
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Later, in a moment of pure, joyous nostalgia, everyone but Easley moved their instruments onto the floor of the venue for “The Ice of Boston,” which has long been an audience participation-heavy part of the set since the Plan’s earliest club show days. Although none of the group’s members are currently active in music, they slipped easily back into the energy and showmanship of bygone days, prompting speculation as to whether they really will take another long break from performing, as they’d told SPIN in May.
Indeed, after the festivities wrapped last night, there was some hopeful chatter about additional Plan shows at some point, although as always, the trick is finding time in the schedule of Easley, who works as a satellite engineer for NASA. The group was heartened by the experience of performing at the first edition of the post-hardcore- and emo-leaning Best Friends Forever festival earlier this month in Las Vegas, where scene peers such as Cap’n Jazz and Sunny Day Real Estate were greeted like visiting royalty. Morrison and Axelson said they even began writing out a list of other classic scene bands that could fill out the lineup for a 2026 edition of the event, from Jawbreaker, the Promise Ring and Trans Am to At the Drive-In, the Mars Volta and Q and Not U.
The notion that bands that were barely scraping by on cross-country van tours in the ’90s and early 2000s are now being honored at a just-launched festival is somewhat incomprehensible to Morrison, who muses, “I mean, think about what a 50-year-old was then! The internet has made culture available to adults that are pinned down by life. Back in the day when you had kids, you kind of left the world, unless you were really, really militant about still going down to the 9:30 Club [in Washington, D.C.] to check out bands. Even then, you had to be a little skeezy, like, hey, kids! What’s hip? In the early aughts, I was completely out of gas and totally burned out on rock’n’roll, but in watching people who hadn’t had as much success as the Plan — maybe like Battles, the Hold Steady, the Wrens, Ted Leo, LCD Soundystem — the ceiling on rock’n’roll just shot up and seemed to go into infinity. I’m not sure where ‘too old to play rock’n’roll’ is anymore. I don’t think it exists. Before streaming and the internet, you moved out to the suburbs and became a statistic, you know? On those early tours, we would have been like, haha, you’re 27 and you’re an ancient piece of shit!’”
The Plan’s set followed Model/Actriz and Sunflower Bean and capped the first of two nights of United Sounds, which was launched by former Siren Music Festival co-founder/programmer Diane Perini in tandem with Shay Vishawadia and Dipesh Sinha. The event resumes tonight with performances from Les Savy Fav, Blonde Redhead and Man Man.
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