Snappy Little Numbers (2026)
This album is a compilation of recordings from a band called Dismiss from 1995-1996 (though admittedly it would be pretty funny if they kept the same album title but the songs were recorded last February). The big selling point here for most people is that three of the four members of Dismiss would later go on to be in Planes Mistaken For Stars. That is not as big a selling point for me. Planes Mistaken For Stars was never one of those bands that I was into. I heard their earlier stuff on Deep Elm and never really went back after that. I always categorized them in the wave of "emo" that didn't really do anything for me (Deep Elm was the epicenter for that sort of thing).
So while I likely can't make too many useful comparisons between these Dismiss recordings and anything that Planes Mistaken For Stars ended up doing, I can tell you that judging these songs on their own without any baggage, I mostly like them. They are certainly a lot poppier than I would have expected given my mental memory for what I think Planes sounded like. What we've got here are quite a few scrappy pop songs with rough, razor wire guitars and scratchy vocals.
This doesn't sound at all dissimilar to other things I was poking my nose around in the mid 90s. There's something of a midwestern vibe to it (though I don't believe Colorado is considered the midwest in any definition of that region) with chugging breakdowns leading into the hooks and some quasi-angular guitar work popping up here and there. The recording quality isn't particularly glossy, but for demos in the 1990s they sound as good or better than a lot of 7"s I bought back then. It's all pretty good and honestly, I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I do. Worth checking out.
Dismiss - Lost Transmissions: 1995-1996:
