he Dismemberment Plan, a four-piece band from D.C., stand at a punk-rock crossroads. One fork leads the way to mainstream success and MTV heavy rotation. But they don’t have Day-Glo hair or put porn stars on their album covers, and they certainly don’t release Michael Jackson covers as singles.

The other path leads back to the underground that spawned them. But the Plan may not be welcome there either, as hardliners would surely balk at their penchant for synthesizers, samplers and guitar effects. And yet for all their refinements in sound, the Plan are the direct descendents of punk innovators and icons Fugazi, Jawbox and Shudder to Think, bands that once ruled the D.C. scene.

Over the course of four full-length albums in eight years, the Plan have developed and refined a sound that mixes equal parts Elliott Smith pop smarts, Talking Heads white-boy funk and Shudder to Think weirdness. Throw in the Minutemen’s sense of humor and you have a rough sketch. But like all forward-thinking punks, the Plan are more than the sum of their influences. Despite all the reference points, the group’s albums sound startlingly unique. Only a deeper exploration of their work uncovers the punk family tree many youngsters wouldn’t know existed if it dropped a bushel of mohawks in their lap: bands like Telvision and Gang of Four, art students and radicals who pushed punk beyond four chords and a snotty British accent.

The Plan push further. They are a smart band, musically and lyrically, but they are not elitist (lead singer Travis Morrison candidly admits his taste for Britney-flavored cheese). They engage brain and booty equally, and this is the real secret to their success. It’s the thing bands like Talking Heads understood, and the reason almost anyone can appreciate the music of George Clinton. Because, as human beings trapped on the physical plane, sound alone is not enough—we must shimmy and shake and move.

mergency & I was released in 1999 and proved the Plan knew how to groove. Tracks like “Spider in the Snow” (which mixed equal parts ’80s synth-pop and Lee “Scratch” Perry dub-rhythm) and “A Life of Possibilities” (in which Morrison emulates Prince’s falsetto over a dirty bassline) rocked and rolled like some demented disco-beast with steel-toed boots and a union-jack tattoo. Hidden beneath the butt-shaking, Morrison’s lyrics revealed a wry but sympathetic observer of the human condition, able to mix abstract imagery, fantasy and heart-breaking truth with effortless grace. The album generated serious anticipation for their next effort, Change, released late last year.

On first listen, the aptly titled LP sounds like a major departure, with less visceral impact than the suckerpunch its predecessor delivered. But after a few spins, Change emerges as the band’s strongest, most cohesive work. “Sentimental Man” starts things off strong, but it’s the seamless transition into “The Face of the Earth” that hips you to the Plan’s evolution. As acoustic guitar plucking gives way to lumbering dub bass and reggae-like rhythm guitar scratches, a yearning Morrison melody addresses the titular theme that resounds throughout the album: separation and resolution, breaking up and moving on. Understated synth floats through the stereo field, lending a ghostly presence to the lyrics.

Elsewhere on the record, “Pay for the Piano” is a furious, Fugazi-style workout, full of awkward angles that resolve in a chorus of straight-line adrenaline. “Secret Curse” rips like early Sonic Youth (but with guitars in tune), mixing meaty rock riffs with whispered verses and a lung-bursting chorus of “Please, please, please I’m sorry!” “The Other Side” features a standard pop chord progression, but drummer Joe Easley lays an inhuman drum ’n’ bass groove underneath the affair that must be heard to be believed.

The album’s closer, “Ellen & Ben,” is pure pop bliss: A video game synth riff winds its way around Easley’s hip-hop groove while disco guitars dance and Morrison sings about a pair of lovers “who made each other feel like they could die, but couldn’t stay the slightest of friends.” For an album about growing apart and growing up, it’s the perfect finale.

ut Change is also an alarm call. Although major labels traffic in watered-down Punk Lite™ and the music’s rebel yell has been reduced to a meek, radio-friendly “Oi,” you can’t blame The Man entirely. Even punk’s most “hardcore” institutions, led by iconoclastic newsprint rag Maximum Rocknroll, have helped foster the decline by proclaiming any music without buzz-saw guitars or dexedrine-fueled screams “unpunk.”

The result of such scenester posturing was predictable: Divided we fall. Divisive politcs, retro-kitsch and resistance to change have bled punk dry. Don’t let the Dismemberment Plan’s name fool you: This is a band about uniting body and mind, about making people think about punk rock as intensely as they feel its caged-animal energy.

Attend one of the Plan’s damn near religious live shows, and when the beer-bellied Milwaukee native next to you begins gyrating to “Spider in the Snow,” and the Costello-spectacled lad in the striped sweater next to him follows suit, you’ll understand what I mean by unite. You’ll understand why humans created punk rock in the first place. It’s the connection, the “silver thread imbedded deep within our spines” that binds us to one another. This is the Plan. This is how we change—for the better.

Evan Endicott is a music writer living in Los Angeles.

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