When I received Cursive’s Happy Hollow this past summer, I was surprised just how much the record stood apart from their previous full-lengths. With less emphasis on leader Tim Kasher’s personal battles, the album takes more of a fairy tale route. A Wizard Of Oz for the Bush era if you will. I listened to it pretty religiously for a week or two and then it slowly faded away from constant playback on my iPod.

Something kind of peculiar happened when I put it on recently though; I found it to be strangely wishy-washy at times. The album has some stand out tracks on it, such as “Bad Sects” and “Dorothy At Forty,” but I’m afraid the album is just not standing the test of time (odd since it just came out a month ago). Either that or I just got burned out from listening to it so often. Regardless, The Ugly Organ is still as emotionally gripping as it was when I first heard it. “Staying Alive” still gives me goosebumps. I’ve come to one conclusion in regards to the band; Cursive is combusting right in front of our eyes. This notion was proven further at Sunday’s Webster Hall show.

The band wanders on stage, looking timid and lost, playing a directionless intro before eventually going straight into one of their best songs “A Gentlemen Caller.” The other highlight I could think of during the rest of the night was “Sierra,” again off Organ. Again touring as an eight-piece, the songs themselves should be, at their best, the most exciting and expanded music that Cursive has done. But, I guess not surprisingly, they just do not seem to be emotionally in it anymore. As Kasher stated to me in an interview last July, the band is just on an album-to-album basis. Is Happy Hollow the band’s last record? Will they go on to make another record? Who knows really. Honestly though, after seeing Sunday’s show and reading a few other somewhat negative reviews (http://www.punknews.org/review/5684), I’m concerned that the band’s end may be near.

Kasher has always been that engaging, painfully self-critical front man, but he seemed completely out of it on Sunday. Fittingly, towards the end of the set he announced he was definitely not feeling the band’s performance thus far. Noting how the band should be stoked because there was such a large crowd of people there to see his band, he has said his efforts to enjoy the last five songs yielded no results. Overall, the crowd was much more excited about the performance then I thought, even after he made the awkward announcement.
I’ve thought about this for a few days now and I really think the band has just made their last album. I want to be proven wrong but I can’t help and think that this is the last road Cursive will travel down. I hope I’m over-thinking this whole thing but there have been too many signs pointing towards a sad and bitter end for the band.

Tags: Cursive, show review //