Call it art-core, call it post-hardcore, call the genre whatever you want; Omaha's Cursive has been running that drill for nearly a decade.
The band's 1997 debut album "Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes" featured explosive guitar melodies as well as front man Tim Kasher's inimitable throat-ripping vocals and lyrical catharses that provided a kind of emo music for angry young people who would rather read than go to the mall.
Over the next five years, Cursive would release three full-lengths, each more mature than the last. They added a cellist. Chops took over for abrasive guitar strangling, belting replaced braying, and songs of loss and failure took on a decidedly more adult tone.
The spastic gushing of "Such Blinding Stars..." in songs like "After the Movies" ("Have I hurt you?/ I have hurt myself/ These sad songs won't change anything") gave way to veritable concept albums, like 2000's magnum opus "Domestica," a taut, chilling (if didactic) rendering of a painful break-up.
"Happy Hollow," their first proper album in years, is yet another creative leap away from Cursive's screaming, thrashing, heartbroken beginnings, and it is damn good. Eschewing loving and losing for issues of faith, frustration and suburban/rural decay, this is Kasher's most ambitious songwriting effort to date.
His singular gift as a lyricist has always been his ability to tell big stories through people. His songs about breaking up don't sound like a teenager crying into his journal, for he spins a break-up so that it not only successfully captures the weighty subject of human separation, but also illuminates larger questions of humanity and survival. "Domestica" was as much about exploitation, dependence and fantasy as it was about heartache and loss.
"Happy Hollow," the name of a fictional, prototypical, American town, finds Kasher adding several dimensions to this extrapolative formula. Small-town America replaces romantic disintegration as the album's overarching lyrical concept, and the broader topic allows Kasher access to even more issues than before.
Lost religion, atheistic cynicism and beef with the Church are the most regular topics, cropping up most eloquently in "Big Bang" and "Rise Up! Rise Up!" the existential, blasphemous screed of a heretic.
The thing is, when Kasher shouts "I wasted half my life on the thought that I'd live forever!," it is as much about spiritual disillusionment as it is about contemporary American life. It takes a lot of discontent for atheism as incendiary and fierce as Kasher's to exist in a traditional, small American town like Happy Hollow (he'd know; he's from Nebraska), and to Kasher, this country has come to a point that even traditionally faithful people want to "Rise Up!"
Faith is not the only dying American value in Happy Hollow. Patriotism ("Flag and Family"), sexist gender roles (hit-worthy single "Dorothy at Forty"), and homosexuality (the gorgeous "Bad Sects," the haunting confessions of a gay clergyman) are addressed in ways that radically debunk conventional, one-horse-town beliefs. Again, Kasher's poetic invalidation and, at times, detonation of traditional ideas in the heartland not only breathe life into these issues on their own, but present a rattled, dynamic version of American life.
Admittedly, Kasher doesn't always succeed in this mammoth undertaking. At times, his wayward small town sounds a touch trite. In "Retreat!," the least convincing of his anti-church numbers, Kasher addresses God by saying, "Since you've been away on holiday/ We've stomached your archaic rule/ And since you've been away on holiday/ We've hosted some wars over you" with all of the intensity and fervor of Tobey Maguire's defiant scenes in "Pleasantville."
Fortunately, when Kasher slips, the music is there to pick him up. Not only is "Happy Hollow" Kasher's most ambitious effort, it's his bandmates' as well. The departure of cellist Gretta Cohn last year created an instrumental void that the band interestingly filled with trumpets, saxophones, bells and subtle production effects, resulting in some of Cursive's busiest and richest instrumentation.
Ted Stevens (lead guitar), Clint Schnase (drums), and Matt Maginn (bass) also continue their journey from thrashing, grating sonic force on "Happy Hollow," providing a varied and colorful complement to Kasher's songcraft.
On "Big Bang," a wash of noisy guitar and trumpeted exclamation points, they prove they are still capable of blowing your hair back, but on "Bad Sects," Stevens and Maginn team up for an equally powerful, introverted, flowing melody that would make Sunny Day Real Estate or the Kinsellas happy.
It's true that "Happy Hollow" sounds great and reads even better. It's true that, on his most recent batch of songs, Tim Kasher has provided one of the most intricate and engaging portraits of post Sept. 11-America, Afghanistan/Iraq, the Catholic Church scandals, and George Bush in recent memory.
However, it is also true that Cursive most likely will make a different, better album before they disappear. If "Happy Hollow" demonstrates anything, it is that Cursive exists in a creative sphere where change is constantly occurring, growth is necessary, and your best - even if it is one of year's top albums - is never good enough.
