After more than a year's hiatus, Cursive's reemergence finds the freshly reconstituted quartet as self-assured and assertive as ever. And rather than retread familiar artistic ground for which they've accrued accolades by the vanload, Cursive has unfurled their most adventurous and accomplished work to date, Happy Hollow.
Happy Hollow is an expansion of Cursive's trademark discordant swell: dissonant yet distinctively melodic guitar sounds and frontman Kasher's ever-cathartic yowl mesh and clash with horns, piano, accordion and other various instrumentation. The new songs are marked by a new bounce, a buoyant strut and a recognition that hey... this is fun.
Still informed by a wise, road-tested sense of dynamics, the songs groove, rock and dart with brash swagger, interspersed with hints of gospel and skewed blues. The rhythm section, heavier, tighter, and more propulsive than ever, drives the songs forward while horns careen over interweaving guitars and dueling vocals. Eschewing the stock-in-trade relationship lyrics of recent records for a broader scope, Happy Hollow explores and dissects such themes as shattered American dreams, small-town malaise and religious hypocrisy.
Never repeating themselves, Cursive returns to raise the bar with yet another groundbreaking new album--markedly different, but characteristically Cursive. |
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