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High IQ, EQ (that's entertainment)

From the first moment the main band announced itself Thursday night at the Starlight Ballroom - "We're the Dismemberment Plan from Washington, D.C." - I felt bad for the warm-up act, Cymbals Eat Guitars.

From the first moment the main band announced itself Thursday night at the Starlight Ballroom - "We're the Dismemberment Plan from Washington, D.C." - I felt bad for the warm-up act, Cymbals Eat Guitars.

CEG is a rookie outfit, Pitchfork-endorsed, whose debut album, 2009's Why There Are Mountains, consisted of OK indie-bluster. But what worked on record stumbled into busted-larynx emo live. So CEG lost out on two counts: They disappointed in their own right, and they were about to be erased by the best band of the last 20 years.

Dismemberment Plan has something ranking formalists like Radiohead or Wilco don't: the advantage of being 20-now-30-somethings who don't rest the weight of the world on their insane talent. Or to paraphrase combustible front man Travis Morrison to a room of fans on Thursday: "I know you guys are intellectuals; I don't know if you're smart."

Members of the Dismemberment Plan are so smart they spent their existence pairing Steely Dan key changes and Talking Heads-meets-Roni Size rhythm acrobatics with humor, avoiding drama or pretension. So smart they broke up to stay sane and re-formed because they still like one another. And you know their fans are smart because, when Plan came to the tune "The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich," much of Starlight pitched the hilarious, iconic line "Joe got caught aboard a boat with seven tons of opium!" right back.

This miraculous group had already played the best show (2003) I'd ever seen - all requests, incredible verve, ridiculous dancing, defiantly breakneck energy shooting from the drumsticks of Joe Easley, who works as a NASA engineer in his less mind-blowing gig. Thursday night, it was greatest hits, many from the newly reissued classic CD Emergency & I: "What Do You Want Me to Say," in which Morrison loses his membership card to the human race, and "You Are Invited," where he finds it again; "Time Bomb," in which he's compared to various implements of destruction that "only live in that one moment in which you die"; and "The Ice of Boston," in which the audience (including yours truly) traditionally bum-rushes the stage to imitate "two million drunk Bostonians" on New Year's ("Hi, mom! How's Waaaaaaaaashington??").

Plan rapped, jammed (tightly), and occasionally mimicked a serious alternative rock band, yet the intensity didn't drop when they capped their three fastest tunes in a row with Beyoncé and Robyn interpolations.

Morrison made the crowd so happy with his endless encores and japes at his in-attendance nemesis, "the birthday bitch," that he got away with a casually dropped Eagles diss. Plan is so inclusive that fans don't need to be told twice not to get too serious. That vibe creates a rare level playing field between idols and worshippers.

"If I could have it all back again, I'd be out here in a thong," deadpanned the sanest front man in rock. Or do I mean the smartest?