Intermittently during the past decade and a half, guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Tim Kasher has served as the reeling ringmaster for the dark and wonderfully dysfunctional circus known as Cursive. A constantly fluctuating membership has resulted in Cursive’s fascinatingly malleable sound, from the Indie Rock gravity of 1997’s Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes to the denser and more conceptual Early Summer: Semantics of Song in 1998 to the string-driven Burst and Bloom and The Ugly Organ in the new millennium.
Throughout this period, Cursive was often on official hiatus; at one point Kasher started a side project dubbed The Good Life where he recorded more material than his primary band. Eventually he returned to concentrate on Cursive, first with 2006’s brass-flavored and politically/socially conscious Happy Hollow and then with 2009’s straightforward and only sporadically understood Mama, I’m Swollen. With the just released I Am Gemini, Kasher has taken Cursive down a sonic path that blends the edgy quirk of the band’s early output and the more conventional but still clearly off kilter bash-and-bounce of their recent work against a pinwheeling conceptual blueprint concerning good-and-evil, separated-at-birth twins Cassius and Pollock that either rankled or tickled critics.
For the album and subsequent tour, the band’s longtime creative core of Kasher, bassist Matt Maginn and guitarist/vocalist Ted Stevens is joined by keyboardist Patrick Newbery and drummer Cully Symington. Based on the adrenaline level of I Am Gemini, expect a delightfully wild ride on this year’s version of the Cursive coaster.
CURSIVE plays Thursday, April 19 at Bangarang's in Covington with guests Cymbals Eat Guitars and Conduits. Buy tickets, check out performance times and get venue details here.
