Latest Cursive album takes band in new direction

Tim Kasher believes in cohesion.

Having this belief has led his band, Cursive, to continually be labeled as making concept albums.

For Cursive's latest album, "Happy Hollow," critics suggest once again that Kasher's writing is conceptual, and it is.

But that's no different than the majority of albums released today.

"It's not really that strange," Kasher said. "If you're going to do a collection of thoughts, why wouldn't they have some kind of structure to them?"

The focus of Cursive's latest album started with the vague theme of a small town in America.

One of the prominent themes in Cursive's small town record is spirituality and religion.

"Ted (Stevens) and I started with the basic idea of focusing on storytelling and externalizing on the record," Kasher said.

"It was months into the project that all the ideas started coming back to religion."

Kasher said often we stereotypically think of small towns as having a flock quality to its citizens, which lends itself to religion.

Religion then leant itself to the theme of war reoccurring in "Happy Hollow."

"We wanted to make sure the focus wasn't just on (religion and war), so we try to tell stories about small-town middle age and indifference," Kasher said.

Cursive has been together since 1995, and in 2001, the band added cellist Gretta Cohn to the lineup. Cohn split with the group in 2005, marking "Happy Hollow" as a new path for the band.

Kasher said the decision for Cohn to leave was mutual among all five of the members.

"There were a lot of benefits for her to get back to her life in New York, and we were having a difficult time thinking of an album with cello," Kasher said.

"It felt like we had explored everything we could with (the cello), so it actually really helped quite a bit to be able to move onto other sounds."

Kasher said the biggest difference with "Happy Hollow" from the other albums is the lyrical content. But one of the most noticeable musical changes is the horn parts, arranged by Nate Walcott.

The band recorded "Happy Hollow" in Lincoln at Presto Recording Studios. Presto has since moved to Omaha, taking a lot of bigger named Nebraska bands away from Lincoln and its music scene.

Kasher said even with Presto gone, he still sees the same amount of reason to play in Lincoln. He said Cursive tends not to play Lincoln because the band usually plays Sokol Auditorium, and there isn't a point in playing somewhere so close.

He said his other band, The Good Life, still tries to play regularly in Lincoln.

The Good Life started as an outlet for Kasher's other songwriting side but has turned into a larger entity than originally intended.

Kasher said his writing style for The Good Life crept into his songs while he was writing "Happy Hollow."

"When I was writing those songs (for The Good Life), I wasn't really planning on doing another Good Life album, so I really felt like I had a freedom license to borrow from that pool of ideas," Kasher said.

"When we were working on ("Happy Hollow"), some of the band members would joke and call certain parts 'The Good Life part.' "

Kasher plans on recording a new Good Life album in January, he said.

Cursive continues to change its sound with every album it releases, and Kasher thinks this is a good thing, saying that a lot of artists release sequels to all of their albums, but Cursive likes to explore different sounds.

Kasher said there are pluses and minuses for doing it the way the band does it, one being fans get alienated between albums. But he doesn't see much of a change in Cursive's loyal fan base.

"The album isn't blowing up or anything," Kasher said. "Besides 'The Ugly Organ,' we haven't experienced anything by way of leaps or bounds; we've always just plotted away."