Ask your editor sometime about the time she was trapped in a car and talked at for 15 minutes about these dudes…
[Video][Website]
[5.57]
Jonathan Bradley: There’s always been something a bit ungainly about D-Plan: Travis Morrison’s slightly nasally voice, caught between a whine and a shout; lyrics that contain a few too many ideas; arrangements too bright, adorned with too many bells and whistles. But that often worked to their advantage: on those many occasions when the jumble would gain through its maladroitness a nervy energy and Morrison’s plainness would become poignant. “Waiting,” a song with a title too fitting, ambles along with no real purpose. The plinky palette grates and the funk never materializes.
[4]
Anthony Easton: Jovial, just a bit whiny, moves about at a fast clip. I had low expectations, which the band met with aplomb.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: I pretty much always appreciate a disco groove from a non-dance band, but the best thing about disco music is that sometimes the singers shut up and let the music speak for itself. Here it’s not strong enough to say much.
[6]
Alfred Soto: This garrulous number requires the late seventies keyboard textures and backgrounded guitar effects to get over its Julian Casablancas testifyin’.
[7]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Over gorgeously buoyant guitars and swinging drums, the vocals stretch from grungy cynicism to lonely howl before ending up at a suicidal finale. Lives of petty failures are streamlined into one hell of a barfly lullaby.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Serving as a decent shorthand for “passive-aggressive,” “Waiting” is a pissy little sketch that runs through every lazy rhyme pairing imaginable. Here at least, the muscle has atrophied. The bright-sky organ and complex drumming are fine, but the only real propulsion comes from some palm-muting. And again, that text is ass.
[3]
W.B. Swygart: This may sound odd, but I think I’d much prefer this song if it were by Alexandra Burke. She’d add a bit more wit, a bit more heft where poor old Travis Morrison just keeps stacking up the grumpiness, and it might swing like it needs to. As things stand, this sounds like They Might Be Giants covering Semisonic, which on paper looks like a good thing (to me), but sonically feels like remembering how much of a twat you were (I was) when you were (I was) 24. And the Dismemberment Plan are much, much better than that. (Sidenote: that slide guitar noise… this isn’t an answer song to “All I Wanna Do“, is it?)
[5]