I read about their brilliant 2000 album 100 Broken Windows in Spin. Where from a good amount of my middle-teen tastes sprung forth. You know, back before non-music fans bought the franchise and put Fall Out Boy on the cover. Anyway, I digress (Spin blows). I went to the local record store, which, yes, we still have one of those, and yes, I still call it that, and picked up the album on import. This was before you could find the really good obscure shit online. If it was Spice Girls or heaping amounts of virus-laden porn, you weren't finding this shit on Limewire.

I brought it over to the house of my Other Nerdy About Music friend, and we went down to the basement and threw it on a crappy '90s silver boombox. Not one of the cool detachable speaker ones, mind you. The shit with the speaker built in. What passes for a clock/radio now. And we listened to what up until that point in my life was one of the greatest albums I had ever discovered. It was totally different. Like some kids from across the pond were working on music on an isolated island, foreign from evolution and outside tampering and natural selection - the shit was confined. Turns out that island was Scotland.

And it turns out Idlewild sounded like hundreds of other bands I love. They fit perfectly in the lineage of spittle-and-rage + melody + emotion music that had been progressing since the late '70s. The Buzzcocks to Husker Du to harder R.E.M. to Nirvana to Idlewild. It's all the same shit. Brilliant, lovely shit.

So that brings us to "Roseability", a song which my puny 14-year-old brain envisioned becoming the biggest song in the world. This band was going to be huge, and I was there on the ground floor. I was going to be able to hold this over those other oblivious fucks for years, well through college. But then nothing happened. No one in the US gave a shit. And Idlewild lightened up and eventually started making mediocre pop-rock that now makes it, well, a little embarassing to back them up so much.

But this song means the world to me. Listen to when the noise kicks in at :34. That's prime Nirvana. It's amping up the volume, yes, but it's also pushing the emotion into a new fuckin stratosphere. And those little angelic back up vocals when Rowdy Roddy sings about Gertrude Stein. It's vitriol and muscle and some sadness and a beautiful ear for melody. And nothing pulls at my heart strings and reminds me of a different time in my life than when he shreds the word "Dissatisfied" at :57. That was the most real, endearing thing I had discovered in my life. And it kind of killed me that no one else cared.

It's hard to describe Dismemberment Plan's sound. That's because it's like Groundhog Day, the inspiration for the band's name. It's familiar and populist and clean for the most part. But there is just something a little off about it, some tweaks here and there that make the entire thing wholly unique and daring. It's a brilliant twist on a traditional archetype. Groundhog Day is a Bill Murray sarcasticomedy vehicle, succinct, well-written, and polished. But what makes the movie is the quirks, be it the movies idea or heart or oddball characters ("Ned?! Ned RYERSON?!") there is just more to it. The music of the Dismemeberment Plan is just like the clean and perfectly-executed indie-punk of the turn of the millenium, except for it's dirty fish-out-of-water quirks. The lightning-paced and funked-up as all hell synco-drumming, the aching and lifting vocals that go wayyyyy out to left field, stretching with an elasticity unlike any current singer, the electronic twitches unheard of in their genre. Big picture - this shit is pure power-pop candy. Closer look - the dings and nicks make it brilliant.

Also, the lyrics. Listen to the pull of Travis Morrison's vocals on lines like "I/I am a TRIP wire." This shit is like great theater, the lines can only be convincing if spouted with conviction, and that's what Morrison does best. And again, the drumming. Just listen to it. The pops, the little hi-hat ticks here and there in unexpected palces. This is the sound of polished mayhem, gritty antiques in an Ikea box. Don't let the packaging fool you. The Dismemberment Plan were one of the most uniquely talented acts of the decade.

And on "Hummingbird" from 2004's A Ghost is Born, Tweedy and co. go for their most naturally classic pop song to date, doing a dead-on Fab Four impersonation replete with chugging outro and McCartney voice strains. Seriously, this is Lennon/Macca for a new generation, except it's coming from one man and the band is tighter. For proof positive, listen to Tweedy's elastic voice streeeetttttttch up and then down for the hesitant, playful notes at 1:55. Listen to "Count them." That is Paul McCartney reborn. Or, well, that can't be. I forget that the Beatles are actually dying in coolness order. Ringo will live to be 117.

At 2:35, the band shakes off the song's slow-rolling rust and stomps through the most blatantly obvious 30-second ELO rip-off of all time. But guess what? This song is better than anything Jeff Lynne ever wrote. And that's an important distinction that maybe Wilco alone shares among their contemporary indie rock peers. They show their influences with pride and reverence, but often they improve on their own history. I'm not saying they're better than the Beatles. But they do more with this Beatle-esque ditty than any other band in the world could. They make something fresh and beautiful and moving from the ashes of a sound that is burned to the ground every day by less deserving bands. Also, hold on to your butts (Samuel L. voice). We aren't through with the boys from Chi-town just yet.