Tim Kasher’s Cursive have been making records for the past 12 years, and although they’ve never quite reached the same level of popular appeal as good pal Conor Oberst, they’ve received critical appreciation along the way from fellow bands and the musical press.
‘Mama, I’m Swollen’ finds them recharged after a three-year break for their sixth release. Kasher has turned 34, and is now divorced and disappointed with life. In fact, ‘Mama…’ finds him suffering a full-blown midlife crisis, one that demands our attention from the word go in the frantic call to arms ‘In the Now’. He doesn’t let go over the next 40 minutes, delivering roaring poetic bar tales of dysfunction and disappointments with humanity, using a range of musical styles from emo to country and back again to indie-pop, sparkling with echoes of a deranged Robert Smith along the way for good measure.
Kasher questions over and over again his sense of worth: “When you’re young you’re going to be someone, and when you’re old you’re ashamed of what you’ve become,” he observes in the energetic ‘What Have I Done?’, a harrowing tale of a man struggling to write the great American novel and wondering quite what his life is worth. Kasher concludes this tale by frantically screaming the song’s title over and over to the suffocation of relentless guitars until both, seemingly exhausted, die down as the album comes to a close, and we can all take a deep breath again.
Yes, the whole thing can be terribly self-indulgent, and no doubt some may feel Kasher’s diary tales of his sad musings and disappointments with life a bit much to take for 40 minutes, and it might be too polished for fans of Cursive’s more experimental releases (this is no ‘The Ugly Organ’); but what we do have is an intelligent album and there are enough catchy hooks and whirling carousel melodies to keep the Cursive sound both fresh and intriguing.
‘Mama, I’m Swollen’ is a worthy examination of Kasher’s detachment from society through a snow globe that might just shatter at any moment.
Words: Stephen Maughan
8/10
