Emergency & I

There's a reason why this record rode a slingshot into the top 50 of Pitchfork's first 90s list without so much as a month passing between its release and the feature's print date: Travis Morrison and the Plan didn't hold a thing back. On this, their third and penultimate album, they recklessly careened through an all-encompassing sonic landscape and nailed every possible, terrifying angle along the way: "What Do You Want Me to Say" seethes with rabid frustration; "Gyroscope" and "The City" are wantonly pop-inflected slices of wistful melancholia; "Memory Machine" and "8½ Minutes" jut out with razor-sharp abandon; "Spider in the Snow" and "The Jitters" swim in demoralization and reflectiveness; "I Love a Magician" is warped by its own maniacal impulses; "Back and Forth" is the flammable, anthemic call-to-arms for a revolution that demands you stop giving a shit. The album's lyric book reads better than half the modern volumes on my bookshelf. Modern R&B should have as much rhythm. Modern rock should have as much balls. --William Morris