Office of Future Plans is out on Nov. 21 on Dischord. Listen to "Salamander":

Office of Future Plans – "Salamander" by Dischord Press

Also, for those of you who were bummed about Title Tracks getting rained out this week, fear not—they have been added to the Monday, July 25 show with J.Robbins' excellent Office of Future Plans and The Akoma Drummers.

Brian Schanck was 15 years old when a friend played him Emergency & I, the third album by The Dismemberment Plan. “The music was euphonious and the lyrics hit home,” he says, recalling the D.C. indie rock band’s oddball pairing of funk rhythms and emo narrative. He dug it.

When Schanck turned 18, he tattooed the album’s cover art—abstract cartoons doodled by the band’s singer, Travis Morrison—on his ribcage beneath his right arm. He started playing bass in bands in the Tampa, Fla., area.

Schanck, now 24, has since made some regrettable decisions—he’s currently serving a three-year sentence in a Florida prison for a drunk-driving conviction—but he stands by his ink.

“[I liked] how diverse and eccentric they were,” he says, answering questions sent via Facebook and posed over the phone by his parents. “How intriguing the time signatures were, how Travis sang, and how amazing they were as musicians. They had no barriers, [the music] seemed crazy but created comfort.”

He cites his favorite lyrics, from “Spider in the Snow”: “The only thing worse than bad memories is no memories at all.”

An album’s legacy can’t be measured in permanent ink alone, but more than a decade after its release, it’s clear that Emergency & I struck a special chord. Since the group disbanded in 2003, the record has accrued cult-like adoration—the kind of indie-kid love fest otherwise reserved for bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and Pixies. People remember where, when, and who they were with when they first turned it on. They climbed in vans and followed the band on tour, Grateful Dead-style. Fans didn’t just love it; they lived it.

And for some reason, now there are more of them than ever.

To commemorate the release of a remastered, double-LP version of Emergency & I, The Dismemberment Plan is getting back together for a string of concerts. After seven years of relative inactivity—they reunited for a pair of benefit shows in 2007—the band will play to capacity crowds in venues it might have struggled to fill in its peak years. In 2003, the Plan could pack one night at Chicago’s Metro. This time around, two shows there have already sold out. So have gigs at the Black Cat on Jan. 21 and the 9:30 Club on Jan. 22 and 23.

Emergency & I’s appeal is easy to parse. It’s a high-energy and high-emotion record—an album that softened mid-20s angst with self-deprecation and noodle-dance-ready beats. It also showed up at the right time. Released in 1999, Emergency & I caught the music industry at a crossroads—it was paid for by a fading major label, yet popularized, at least in part, through the explosion of music culture on the Internet. Jimmy Iovine wrote the checks. Napster and Pitchfork got the word out. The band, which had long toiled at the margins, finally got some fans.

The Plan formed in 1993, and its sound congealed from contradictory impulses. The rhythm section—Eric Axelson on bass and, eventually, Joe Easley on drums—skewed funky. Guitarist Jason Caddell played fuzzy and jittery riffs. Morrison spit out lyrics like post-punk’s answer to the Micro Machines man. “We felt kinship with bands like Brainiac, and Enon after them,” says Caddell. “Any band that was trying to take a bunch of different music streams and see how convoluted they could twist them together.”

In a landscape populated by dour men with giant amps, the band stuck out. “They had this Technicolor, DayGlo, ultra-colorful sound that contrasted with gun-metal-gray tonalities of the time, particularly in D.C.,” says Beauty Pill founder Chad Clark, who co-produced Emergency & I.

By the time the band released The Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified, its second album, in 1997, it had built a modest following. Major-label ears perked up and, around that time, the band signed to Interscope. It was able to record for three weeks at a pricey studio—Water Music in Hoboken, N.J.—and hire Clark and Jawbox founder J. Robbins to produce.

But it became clear Emergency & I was not a huge priority for Interscope, which was then being batted around amid a series of corporate mergers. “‘Ice of Boston’ was the main hook for Interscope,” theorizes Clark, who says the label pushed for the song, which was already on Is Terrified, to be included on the next record. “The banana-in-the-ear, wacky, zany, alt-rock hit was a viable way to get a band noticed back then. My feeling was they were dismayed by increasingly serious character of the Plan’s music.”

Interscope dropped the band, which got an unusually good deal—the label returned the master tapes and let the Plan keep the advance. After a year of waiting, Emergency & I came out on D-Plan’s longtime indie home, DeSoto, in 1999.

It wasn’t an immediate smash. Emergency & I gradually percolated into popularity through traditional means—fanzines, extensive touring, some print write-ups. But the record was also among the first wave of indie records to see tangible benefits from the Internet.

Emergency & I arrived in the year of Napster, which made MP3s of the record easily available to college students who had noticed the buzz. The band maintained a presence on the then-newfangled MySpace and frequently updated its website. Fan-run sites like Knerd (now defunct) also posted—unbeknownst to the band—a few free, downloadable bootlegs of concerts. “We benefited from being on the cusp of the first true Internet generation,” says Caddell. “Kids who from childhood were conversant in the language and used it as an intense cultural resource.”

Emergency & I didn’t get much traction with glossy music magazines, but indie-oriented music sites paid attention. “Now get ready—I’m gonna gush because I’m embarrassed I didn’t put this on my top 10 list and because they deserve it,” wrote Sarah Zupko in Popmatters. Pitchfork Media gave the record a full-bore super-endorsement. “I could spend pages examining this record,” wrote Brent DiCrescenzo. “Everything down to the art is stunningly unique and perfectly appropriate.” He published a more direct review at the top of the page: “If you consider yourself a fan of groundbreaking pop, go out and buy this album right now.” The website named it record of the year in 1999. (Disclosure: I’ve written for Pitchfork since 2007.)

Web hype, however strong, doesn’t account for Emergency & I’s long-term resonance. The songs sold themselves. “It’s too simple to say songwriting got better,” says Josh Modell, editor of the Onion AV Club, who compiled an oral history for the vinyl release. “They calmed down. The weirder, goofier elements balanced out with serious lyrics.”

Morrison edged away from straight-up wackiness and applied his playful, self-effacing sense of humor to more adult themes. Songs like “A Life of Possibilities” captured the free-flowing aimlessness of post-college doldrums. “The title sounds bright, but it’s a dark and surreal story,” explains Clark. “It’s a life of possibilities, but one of those possibilities is that nobody gives a fuck about you.” It’s a coming-of-age record set halfway between Shudder to Think and Jimmy Jam.

Morrison is a little self-conscious about the lyrics now and laments their unambiguity. “You know on ‘Once in a Lifetime,” where David Byrne is singing, ‘There is water at the bottom of the ocean,’ and you’re, like, ‘Why is he saying that?’ There aren’t a lot of those moments,” he says. “But at least the single entendres are fully felt.” Morrison cops to listening to a lot of pop country at the time, keying in on the songwriter’s ability to generate a linear narrative. “Country is not interested in the sublime at all. The story is told and you relate to the story,” he says. “Nobody was writing stuff like that in our context.”

That much is true. But The Dismemberment Plan, thankfully, did not play sad songs and waltzes. Part of what sells Morrison’s über-earnest songwriting is the context—“Memory Machine,” with its foreboding, angsty vibe, is presented not as singer-songwriter mulch, but atop an odd time Meters-informed bass hook.

“It was like going to a party and they’re playing four different stereos,” says Robbins. “One guy is DJing Daft Punk, another Stevie Wonder, and another Radiohead. The synthesis worked, even though there were a lot of times where the right hand had no idea what the left hand was doing.”

Photo courtesy The Dismemberment Plan/Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

Before OFP's forthcoming release got the funding it needed, Arts Desk asked the band a couple questions about going the Kickstarter route, and why they decided to cover the Stranglers.

"As for the choice of Kickstarter, there were a few determinants," wrote OFP cellist Gordon Withers. "First of all, we wanted to put out the 7-inch ourselves—it just felt like the right thing to do for our first release. (I expect we'll look for a label for the upcoming full-length.) Second, the costs of doing a nice 7-inch—including special mastering for vinyl, printing color sleeves, etc.—were more than we anticipated. We can't wait for months and months to recoup—it needs to be a soon as possible."

Withers isn't new to Kickstarter: He used the site to fund the vinyl version of his second solo album back in 2009.

"I was able to convince the other guys that it was a tenable prospect, and the response so far has been much greater than we ever anticipated," Withers wrote. "We all think it's wonderful that in 2011, there are all these great tools (Kickstarter, BandCamp, Etsy, and similar sites) that enable such great punk-rock/DIY-style methods of funding and distribution."

The single's B-side is a cover of the Stranglers' "Everybody Loves You When You're Dead." OFP frontman and unabashed Stranglers fan J. Robbins had quite a bit to say about OFP's cover selection.

"The Stranglers are a greatly under-appreciated band, and one of my all-time favorites," wrote Robbins. "'Everybody Loves You When You're Dead' is on the album La Folie, which was the midpoint of the transition from their early, highly idiosyncratic and abrasive sound to their later, much smoother and less immediately arresting (but more commercially successful) pop sound. The song is really anthemic, totally the kind of song I've always wanted to be able to write but have always been too self-conscious to pull off."

Though Robbins has a lot of love for the band and the song, he felt OFP had something to bring to the tune.

"The original version has this really weird, ambivalent energy that has a certain charm but in the end is kind of underwhelming," Robbins wrote. "It's a song where I thought we could do a considerably different version from the original, and bring the kind of energy to it that as a Stranglers super-fan I always wished the song had in the first place. We have a lot of recorded material and we considered a few different songs for the 7-inch, but B-sides are a good place for obscure cover tunes, and thematically and energetically, 'Everybody' makes a nice pair with 'Harden Your Heart.'"

Even though the band has reached their Kickstarter goal, there's still plenty of time to pledge and pre-order their debut single. And no one's pledged the $1,000 for an OFP cover: That means there's still time to get another Stranglers cover out of OFP.

Office of Future Plans is readying its debut 7-inch, and the band has launched a Kickstarter campaign to cover some of the costs for producing the single's initial run of 500 copies. It's a two-song release: On the A-side is an original song called "Harden Your Heart," while a cover of the Stranglers' "Everybody Loves You When You're Dead" rests on the B-side. OFP hopes to reach its goal of $2,550 in 22 days so they can release the 7-inch the same week the group opens for The Dismemberment Plan at the 9:30 Club on Jan. 23.

While the first recorded songs from the new J. Robbins project are exciting enough, the rewards OFP is offering are outstanding on their own. Besides the usual schwag—digital and physical copies of the 7-inch, stickers, and a t-shirt—the band is offering a slew of personalized prizes. OFP cellist Gordon Withers will add cello tracks to "a song of your choice" for $100, or OFP drummer Darren Zentek will give you a lesson behind the kit for the same price; for $500, you get a day in Robbins' recording studio, Magpie Cage, and either Withers, Zentek, or OFP multi-instrumentalist Brooks Harlan will accompany your session for a few hours; and, for an additional $500, you get the studio day and the band will record a cover song.

But that sweet $1,000 prize does have a disclaimer: "Additionally, the cover song is subject to negotiation. We're open to most anything, but we won't be re-arranging an hour-long piece for gamelan orchestra, for instance." Sounds like Ke$ha is still on the table, then...

If you're wistful for the days when summer meant breezy party rock and foreign films in a dank and dusty art house, today's your day.

Word around the West End is that 2301 M Street NW, formerly home to part of the Inner Circle pair of independent cinemas, has been leased by Josh Levin, a New York-based documentary distributor with a knack for history and a plan to open a new venue for first-run independent films. In a town whose only options for independent and foreign films are the Mark Cuban-owned Landmark E Street Cinema, the tiny Avalon in distant Chevy Chase, and the institutional colossus that is AFI (which, technically, isn't even in town), the planned West End Theater can't come soon enough.

Meanwhile, Acetate Records' Rick Ballard didn't take too kindly to Arts Editor Jonathan L. Fischer's snarky post on Monday about the current activities of Reagan-era party rockers The Factory. Ballard e-mailed Fischer with some rejoinders and an MP3 of a new track featuring a more summery side of the typically hard-partying Factory of yesteryear.

DCist interviews J. Robbins of Jawbox, Burning Airlines and Channels about his latest project, Office of Future Plans, which combines Robbins' rangy guitar licks with cello and the occasional sample. And since last December's one-off Jawbox reunion on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, interest in Robbins' activities is as buzzing as ever.

WaPo's Ron Charles enjoyed Gary Shteyngart's latest, "Super Sad True Love Story," but the review does not bode well for those reading on the iPad. Meanwhile, longtime Postie Dave Kindred is at Politics & Prose promoting his new history of the Post, "Morning Miracle: A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life."

And even though Steve Wynn loves Stephen Strasburg enough to write him a song, Hall of Fame member Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., has about as much respect for the rookie phenom as he does for laid-off workers.

"It was important to us to keep the event free," Clark tells Arts Desk. "In my mind, I see Story/Stereo as a companion or sister event to Fort Reno—we're inspired by Fort Reno giving something to the community that's free, positive, and about art and expression. I think it's great that Story/Stereo begins exactly when Fort Reno ends, and ends when Fort Reno begins."

Previously, the event has been funded by the Writer's Center—a nonprofit that is funded by the "Maryland Arts and Humanities council, as well as a blend of other sources," according to Clark. While next fall's line-up has yet to be announced, the NEA grant won't impact the curators' selections. "There are no restrictions on the grant at all, that I know of," says Clark. Though he declined to disclose the amount of the grant, he did say: "Without it, we would've had to ask people involved to volunteer. We might've been able to continue because the goodwill has been so strong, but I'm psyched about the grant. I see it as fuel for us to continue."

"I still regard the whole thing as an experiment," says Clark. "We've overcome certain perceptions that it could somehow be stuffy—that it would be somehow dreary and intellectual. It's really comfortable, and it's in a beautiful theater that many people didn't know existed before Story/Stereo happened."

That it's not a typical rock 'n' roll venue might be an advantage, Clark says: "It actually makes a great date. You're going to like something a lot—either the band and the music or the author or poet—and even if there's something you don't like, there will be something interesting to talk about."