Cursive
Mama, I’m Swollen
(Saddle Creek)
“Sink to the Beat,” the lead song on Cursive’s Burst and
Bloom EP, might have been one of the first reflexive rock records
I’d ever heard back when it came out, a song about the apparently messy
business of writing songs (a niche subject I’ve since found plied by
several of my favorite artists). The rest of that EP, as well as
follow-up full-length The Ugly Organ, expertly combined such
clever self-awareness with grand, gut-wrenching rock operatics about
heartbreak and loneliness. I missed Happy Hollow, but, that
intermediary step aside, Tim Kasher and company’s new album, Mama,
I’m Swollen, is a bit of a letdown.
Mama, I’m Swollen purportedly tackles “Peter Pan Syndrome”
(which sharper critics have pointed out is sort of endemic to emo)
along with the usual religion and existential angst (with some
peripheral mommy issues thrown in for good measure). But the tracks
that take these themes head-on are among the album’s most clunky and
forgettable—”Donkeys,” with its extended allusion to the Pleasure
Island of Pinocchio (and so a sort of update to The Ugly
Organ‘s “Driftwood: A Fairy Tale”), and “Caveman,” with its
painfully punning equation of upward mobility to walking upright and
its thudding conclusion, “I’m no happy family man/I’m no husband, ain’t
no dad/I’m a goddamned caveman” (which—and this isn’t Kasher’s
fault—just makes me think of those terrible car-insurance
commercials).
“I Couldn’t Love You” is far better, its rousing chorus working a
simple lyrical ambiguity rather than a pained play on words; the
homophonic variations “I couldn’t love you anymore” and “I couldn’t
love you any more” suggest a failure to love sufficiently, a failure to
continue loving, or both. “We’re Going to Hell” is equally effortless
and effective, the kind of guilty realization that lapsed Catholics
probably write in their sleep. Finale “What Have I Done” finds Kasher
scratching out lyrics in a lonely motel room, a sad update of old
reflections, its titular refrain of lost time and regret as
heartbreaking as anything he’s scratched out so far. Throughout, the
band (sans cello, plus Cornbread Compton on drums) swerve from weepy,
careful quiets to explosive, cathartic louds with ease, playing
faultlessly if not really adventuring beyond Cursive’s well-established
sound. 