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.