Of the many valid reasons to love the Dismemberment Plan, high on the list is the palpable sense of joy that comes through in the band's music. Though its complicated time signatures and literate lyrics steer well clear of the insipid happy of party pop, the Plan puts forth an eloquent argument that good rock demands jubilation.

"There's just the whole anti-hedonistic thing in the indie rock world of not wanting to enjoy yourself, and I don't know what that's about." So says Travis Morrison, the Plan's singer/songwriter/guitarist. "I mean, forget about being born in Rwanda--there's people who have to commute two hours, morning and night, to get to their job and they probably don't like it very much. In the last couple of years, I've internalized the fact that I'm, like, almost obscenely spiritually fortunate."

Morrison's sanguine outlook is all the more encouraging because it arose from his band's flirtation with the notorious scapegoat of major labeldom. Writ short, after five years on D.C. indie label DeSoto Records, the Dismemberment Plan signed to Interscope, then an eclectic outfit boasting artists as diverse as Dr. Dre and Drive Like Jehu (remember the '90s?). One second later, Interscope became the linchpin of the Universal conglomerate, and the Plan became a distant memory.

Meantime, the band had recorded Emergency & I, a record that represented a massive artistic advance (pun intended), and had to wait for Interscope to make up its mind about releasing it. Such waiting periods have thwarted many a band; the Plan not only persevered, they prospered during the downtime. Emergency became a cult sensation long before its release (thanks, Napster!), and by the time the band had extracted itself from the label, there was a newly appreciative group of fans, eager to support it.

"Sometimes lemons are just lemons," Morrison laughs, "but ours almost turned into lemonade by itself."

Far from making the band bitter, the Interscope experience was a wake-up call. "There's two things that a major label'll do," Morrison explains. "Provide access to mass media channels and give you money. There are people in this world who should be on major labels for artistic reasons, like Missy Elliott. She's working in a realm where you need a lot of dough. And she's got ambitious ideas, and they're great ideas. I'm so glad someone is paying for her to execute them. Now, I'm not her. I'm not one of those people, and I didn't even realize it at the time. And if they hadn't let us go, I would've just sat around going 'No' all my time there. And I'm really glad I was denied the opportunity to make such a fool out of myself. Maybe if we had been on the label longer, the whole thing would've happened and I would've blamed my musical life on Interscope Records. And I'm so glad I'm not in that place, spiritually. I'm not talking like Aimee Mann in interviews and like emoting about how [the label] didn't love me. Well, what's love? Don't you have a mother?"

Which brings us to Change, the Plan's latest album, and another stylistic leap. After the conscientious eclecticism of Emergency--which bore at least two obvious, holy-shit-why- isn't-this-a-hit-yet? standouts--every song on the new record feels integral. From open ("Sentimental Man") to close ("Ellen and Ben"), Change catches its characters at crucial points of transition; its thematic locus is the moment of recognizing what's important in fact, as opposed to theory. This relentless self-examination (or examination of selves) is echoed in the music, which shape-shifts all over the shop, admitting somehow that almost nothing is permanent except, dur, change.

Change is a record about embracing the complexity of life, and finding joy in the withering gaze of getting older. The Plan's dalliance with "the Soviet-style bureaucracy" of corporate rock found them born again committed, and while it'd be precious to think the experience didn't influence the new record, it would be selling the band short to think it was all that went into the process.

"There were other things for me too," Morrison explains. "Like my dad died, and my sister had a kid right around that [time] too. So like, I had all kinds of existential bitch slaps. Which I'm enormously glad for. I mean, a lot of times indie rock is the sound of the existentially un-bitch slapped. [Laughs.] I'm so grateful for them now. I mean, I don't know... I shudder to think what kind of music I would be making if I was not."