Artist of the Day: Cursive

I know it may seem like I'm a Cursive fanboy, what with the A-ranking of I Am Gemini, and general high praise of the band. But then, that's why we're featuring bands we like and want other people to know about. Cursive is an effort lead by Tim Kasher, guitarist and vocalist, and Matt Maginn, bassist. Over the years, Cursive's sound has been all over the place - but it's evolved to something stylistically individual, and fantastically musical.

Their early records were rough-cut at best, but they were released at a time when Cursive wasn't sure themselves as a band. Such Blinding Stars For Starving Eyes was the debut for the small Omaha-effort, but they "broke up" shortly afterwards and released The Storms of Early Summer: Semantics of Song as a post-breakup record (one which garnered them much attention). After adding a cellist, Gretta Cohn, and working through a record (Burst and Bloom), they released what is their best record in my opinion: The Ugly Organ. This record is like nothing other. It features a harsh load of dissonance for much of the record, yet always returns to such a stunningly beautiful musical basis. It's incredibly impressive how the band writes a main melody, can distort things beyond belief, and then return back to that melody, ever relating the lyrics to whatever sort of fucked-up feel the song has.

After The Ugly Organ, Happy Hollow also garnered them a lot of attention, despite the departure of their cellist, and earned much critical acclaim. Then, the band was brought to the present with I Am Gemini, which you can read about here. The band has had a richly colorful history, and their records really go to show that. The Ugly Organ is absolutely worth a listen, and is a great sample of what Cursive is capable of.

Listen to some Cursive tracks on their MySpace.