Cursive Soundtrack Your Existential Dread on ‘Devourer’

Nebraska indie institution Cursive‘s canon is filled with big swings, from the landmark portrait of marital strife Domestica to the Charlie Kaufman-esque peer into the artist’s mind, The Ugly Organ, to the twin brothers separated at birth conceit of I Am Gemini. While their latest, Devourer, isn’t explicitly a concept album, if you pay attention to the lyrics and are a fan of a certain age, it will likely feel like lead singer and lyricist Tim Kasher has crept inside your mind to pull out your anxieties and set them to 13 raging and pretty songs.

This time out, Kasher casts his critical eye upon the struggles of everyday life and calls them as he sees them, resulting in the strongest collection of songs Cursive have released since The Ugly Organ, balancing a noisy attack and withering lyrics with some of their prettiest and accessible tracks. Everyone is operating at the top of their game. For the uninitiated, Devourer provides a great place to start with Cursive.

These songs could be sentimental pap or cliche-ridden dirges in less competent hands, but Kasher and bandmates won’t go gently into that good night. The tracks are focused and carefully constructed using the classic Cursive sounds–Dischord-inspired guitars, driving beats, and the cello and horns that have been part of the mix since The Ugly Organ. Another win is the production, courtesy of Marc Jacob Hudson. Having worked with the group in the live setting, his understanding of how to make Cursive urgent and powerful is apparent. Devourer is their best-sounding record since Domestica.

The opener, “Botch Job”, launches into a relentless grind as Kasher barks, “Botch job, you fumbled the ball / Never quite got self-actualized.” From there, he’s taking stock of the gap between plans and reality. Lead single “Up and Away” is a pretty lament about where all the time goes and how quickly. “Imposturing” is a catchy self-interrogation that revisits themes so expertly explored on The Ugly Organ, providing a counterpoint to the reckoning of 20 years ago, even going so far as to sing, “No one wants to listen to sins regurgitated on colored wax again / You played your best cards when you were young and insolent.” Many songs aren’t exactly pop, but their hooks take root and take up real estate in your head.

But if Devourer was simply in conversation with past work, it might stall quickly. The balance of the internal and the external is one of the keys to Devourer standing out as one of the high points in the band’s estimable discography. “The Avalanche of Our Demise” has a dark humor about Americans’ generally unfazed attitudes about environmental and political concerns. Will it be another virus? A natural disaster? The push of a button? Kasher wonders, “Will you run and hide or sleep in?” “What Do We Do Now?” ponders the rash of buildings that linger as developers keep on developing, and “Consumers” addresses the inescapable pull to devour more products. 

It wouldn’t be a Cursive record without some wrestling with spirituality, and “Dark Star” fills that spot, beginning with a beat and leading with a keyboard. It is one of the quieter moments on Devourer and a highlight. “Dead End Days” is arguably the catchiest song on the record. Still, its lyrics focus on the systematic inequalities that impact all but the most privileged of us and how those will continue to affect subsequent generations. The closer, “The Loss”, brings the horns to the front and brings the record to an unsettling close. But reassurance has never been the point of Cursive. For Kasher, the here and now might be filled with uncertainty, but it is all we have, and that’s what makes it worth fighting for, midlife crises be damned.