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"  The Dismemberment Plan are one of those bands whose followers are such staunch supporters, so rabidly, emotionally attached, that they border on the obsessive. When the band initially ended its ten-year run in 2003, they left in their wake a hole in the music scene that many never saw filled. There was a brief reunion in 2007, which sold out in minutes, and then another run in 2011, which left fans anticipating new material. Internet rumors spread. A few new songs were performed at a show in August of last year, and then, finally, their forthcoming new album, Uncanny Valley, was announced in July of this year. To see The Plan play is to be completely immersed in a physical and audio experience. Singer Travis Morrison moonlights as a member of an Episcopal choir, and the vocal range is immediately apparent, as he goes from choir boy to screaming alongside the band&amp;#039;s frenetic, pop-punk-funk-jam style, while everybody, literally everybody, is screaming and dancing along with them. We caught up with Travis recently for a special performance of &amp;quot;Daddy Was a Real Good Dancer,&amp;quot; from the new album, and to talk about getting old, getting the band back together, and hip-hop holograms.      ESQUIRE.COM: Why come back now? TRAVIS MORRISON: In 2011 while we were practicing we started to get into more and more spontaneous jams. At the start we&amp;#039;d go down into the basement and play the old songs, and then we&amp;#039;d go get lunch and that&amp;#039;d be it. But increasingly, as we were playing, we started to have these licks and loops and grooves that were just kind of popping up that we liked and at the end of it we said, &amp;quot;If that&amp;#039;s happening, maybe we should keep on going.&amp;quot; Not necessarily make a record or write songs, and be all structured and entrepreneurial about it, but let&amp;#039;s just make synthesizer noises in the basement and see if it&amp;#039;s fun and see if some songs can coalesce out of it. And if they don&amp;#039;t, no harm no foul, we&amp;#039;d have made some fun synthesizer noises and hung out. And here we are. ESQ: How many songs did you guys come up with originally, and how many are on the new album? TM: Ten. We edit as we go along. I know some bands are like, &amp;quot;We recorded 74 songs, and we mixed 40, and then brought it down to the final nine.&amp;quot; Sometimes I wish we were the other way. There&amp;#039;s a lot of artists who have no problem finishing a song they hate \u2014 they&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;I hate this song at the start, in the middle, and the end, but it&amp;#039;s done, and it exists.&amp;quot; For us it&amp;#039;s very much a trial by fire for the songs the whole way, and if they don&amp;#039;t survive, they die. ESQ: You all live in different places now, don&amp;#039;t you? Do you have a hard time getting together to practice? TM: Yeah, two in D.C., I&amp;#039;m here in New York, and the bassist Eric is in Richmond. So yes, yes we do. Everyone has very busy schedules, we all have careers. Jason is a sound engineer, that takes him all over hell and creation, Joe is a robotics engineer for NASA, so that literally means we are beholden to the schedule of the space shuttle. It&amp;#039;s pretty cool, not a whole lot of other bands can say that. But you know, you prioritize, just be a grownup, keep a calendar, say when you can be there and then be there. Which are things that maybe don&amp;#039;t happen for younger bands, where it&amp;#039;s just like oceans of time hanging out. And if you do that you can get it done. ESQ: There probably aren&amp;#039;t many robotics technicians who need to ask for time off to tour with their rock band. TM: Yeah, that&amp;#039;s true. But you know, one thing about being a musician is that people love it. I remember when I was 20 and I would have white-collar temp jobs, and I&amp;#039;d go to my boss and say, &amp;quot;Can I take Friday off? I have a show in Chapel Hill.&amp;quot; And they&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;Show? You&amp;#039;re in a band? Oh my God! Harry, he&amp;#039;s in a band! Do you have groupies? Can we come see you play?&amp;quot; People love it, so you get actually a shocking amount of support. It&amp;#039;s pretty infrequent that somebody wants to just annihilate your little music thing that you do. &amp;quot;Oh you&amp;#039;re in a band? Well, you have to do double shifts.&amp;quot; ESQ: So how would you compare the new album to your previous ones? Some time has certainly passed, and no doubt you&amp;#039;ve all changed quite a bit. TM: Um, yeah. I think it&amp;#039;s less neurotic. Sometimes people talk as if it&amp;#039;s radically different, and I&amp;#039;ll see some differences but then I won&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s too different, so I&amp;#039;m a little bit at a loss. People keep using the word &amp;quot;contented,&amp;quot; and I don&amp;#039;t know if it&amp;#039;s that per se, but it might be more outgoing. As a 40-year-old when I listen to our older music, it has the sound of a hamster furiously running on a wheel. Which is interesting, but not accessible. I don&amp;#039;t feel like the hamster is looking at me and talking to me. And that&amp;#039;s the key part of music, of art, is people in their space and their zone and you&amp;#039;re watching them in their zone, but I kind of feel like the new one is more engaging or outgoing. Maybe more about relationships and more about the real world, and less about what&amp;#039;s going on in somebody&amp;#039;s head. Which is a big part of what rock &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; roll is about, so that&amp;#039;s not a bad thing. ESQ: So it&amp;#039;s really soon to ask this, but what the hell. Will there be another album? Or more to the point, is this a return from hiatus, or just a one-off project? Why did you break up the last time? TM: This thing just came out! No, I don&amp;#039;t know. We were just exhausted, we weren&amp;#039;t making that much money, we had a commitment to not accepting help. It was very much the Washington D.C. punk rock, this is our vision, we play shows 99 months out of the year. We were all passing 30, and running out of creative energy because we didn&amp;#039;t have anything else but the road and middle-class poverty to really know. And that was all we were going to know, from where we were. It was obvious, in retrospect. I think that kind of exhaustion hits a lot of bands that make a good go of it, and I was about to say that don&amp;#039;t have a Learjet flying them from show to show, but I&amp;#039;m not sure the Learjet actually alleviates the exhaustion. I&amp;#039;ve never lived a celebrity life so I don&amp;#039;t know. ESQ: There&amp;#039;s still time. TM: That&amp;#039;s true! I should just twerk more onstage. I think it&amp;#039;s much more touch-and-go, more project to project. It could happen... It would have to be exciting. I think for me it would have to bring exciting people to work with into the fold, interesting studios to record at. It used to be about an endless road trip. And then the day came where I said, &amp;quot;No, this actually can end.&amp;quot; So the road trip is over, and that&amp;#039;s no longer how we&amp;#039;re evaluating what we do. We&amp;#039;re totally open to it, but there&amp;#039;s just absolutely no evidence or reason to really think about it other than pure individual speculation, and I&amp;#039;ve learned that doesn&amp;#039;t get you anywhere in life. ESQ: How long are you on the road for? TM: It&amp;#039;s funny, it&amp;#039;s very weekend-y. We&amp;#039;ll be playing shows continuously through December, but we&amp;#039;re not playing 80 shows throughout the next three months. We&amp;#039;re going home Monday through Friday. The drummer has two kids, he pilots the space station, you know, he&amp;#039;s busy. But we&amp;#039;ll be out and about in Europe and America, here, there, and everywhere, so it&amp;#039;ll look like a tour. They need to have another word for non-continuous touring. Tele-tour. We&amp;#039;re gonna be doing a tele-tour. The Greek word for distance. Eventually, with Google Glass, the tele-tour will just mean that we&amp;#039;re being beamed in. ESQ: It&amp;#039;s only a matter of time. TM: Everyone will just put on their Google Glass and see us appear on the stage. ESQ: Like the Tupac, Biggie, and ODB holograms, but still breathing. TM: I mean, if we&amp;#039;re gonna make holograms of dudes, those are three people... I&amp;#039;m okay with that. Those are three artists I&amp;#039;m okay with having holograms for. ESQ: Yeah, I tried to get an interview with the ODB hologram, but they weren&amp;#039;t having it. TM: I bought his records. You know, I don&amp;#039;t remember any opportunity to go see ODB at the 9:30 Club. I don&amp;#039;t remember ODB tours or anything. I feel like I would have been like, &amp;quot;Whoa, ODB tour? Let&amp;#039;s do this!&amp;quot; The Dismemberment Plan&amp;#039;s Uncanny Valley is out October 15 on Partisan Records. Special thanks to The Impossible Project for the use of their space for this video. Photo of Travis shot on their film. PLUS: Watch More Esquire Live Sessions &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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