For nearly 30 years, Tim Kasher and co. have challenged genre conventions, keeping Cursive‘s sound fiercely unpredictable.
Words: Rob Mair.
A dog bar – a functioning pub with a space for hyperactive pups to run around – is probably one of the more unusual spots for an interview. But then we’re at the Fest in Gainesville; the town is heaving, swelled by the influx of punks for the weekend, and finding a quiet location to chat with Cursive’s Tim Kasher is like finding a duff song in the Nebraskan indie-rockers back catalogue. So here we are. The sun is shining, the dogs are barking, and the beer is flowing.
Yet, for such an off-kilter act, it also makes perfect sense. It’s quirky and off-the-wall, and if that’s not befitting the band that gave us the melodramatic and self-referential ‘The Ugly Organ’ or the twisted psychodrama of ‘I Am Gemini’, then what is?
Cursive are in town as one of the top-billed acts; an outlier of indie-rock in a sea of predominantly punk and hardcore. Later in the day, they’ll take to a packed main stage before iconic indie-rockers Superchunk in a one-two for the ages – and they’ll go down a storm, delivering a set packed with hits drawn from across their catalogue.
“We just don’t fit into a genre that snugly,” muses vocalist Tim Kasher as we discuss why Cursive always stand out on such bills. “We love the festivals that embrace us, and the ones that embrace us are generally the hard rock or the pop-punk ones – and they’re things we’re not – but they’re also the ones that are willing to reach out across the genre lines or genre conventions and say ‘well, you’re kind of hard rock’ or ‘you’re kind of pop-punk’.
“When you get to the other end of the spectrum – like the proper indie-rock, where I feel like we should fit in – we’re seen as too obtuse or too prog or too heavy. Which is funny to me because we’re none of those things necessarily.”
Yet Cursive’s latest record, ‘Devourer’, is all these things and more. At turns, it’s the heaviest thing they’ve ever released – take single ‘Botch Job’ or the juddering ‘What the Fuck’ – yet it also contains their most accessible songs to date, too, as well as some of their weirdest and most elegant. Some, like standouts ‘Consumers’ and ‘The Age of Impotence’, are every bit as genre-defying as Cursive would like. Mission accomplished then, so to speak.
Of course, Cursive – completed by a menagerie of personalities including bassist Matt Maginn, guitarist Ted Stevens, founding drummer Clint Schnase, cellist Megan Siebe, multi-instrumentalist Patrick Newbery and touring drummer Pat Oakes – wouldn’t be Cursive if there wasn’t some sort of theme. Now a scriptwriter and filmmaker, too, it’s little surprise that Tim is a voracious and avid consumer of media. This idea of swallowing media – devouring it, so to speak – is the thematic starting point on an album that dips into imperialism, immediacy and disposability, artistry and commercialism. It’s also another chance for Tim to once again turn the lens inwards and break the fourth wall.
On ‘Art Is Hard’, the group’s breakout, he acerbically wrote of the trials and tribulations of being an artist, delivering a slew of self-aware lyrics which critiqued the songwriting process in the context of break-up breakout ‘Domestica’. Highlights abound, including: “Well, here we go again, the art of acting weak, fall in love to fail, to boost your CD sales” and “If at first you don’t succeed, you gotta recreate your misery.” This time, on ‘Imposturing’, he’s even more pointedly criticising the process, approaching the subject of songwriting from the perspective of someone with a lifetime’s experience behind them. “No one wants to listen to sins regurgitated on coloured wax again. You played your best cards when you were young and insolent.”
It’s a remarkable inside joke that’s been running for the best part of 20 years, and similar examples can be found scattered throughout their body of work.
“The way I see it is, I reserve the right to continue to dip my toes back into those self-referential and meta ideas – like songwriters on songwriting kind of thing. I think it’s healthy, because every few years you have a different perspective on it. It’ll probably never be tapped out; I think I’ll always be curious about it, because I always have to want to expose myself to whatever bullshit I think might be happening,” says Tim.
Of course, the flip side of being so meta and self-referential – heck, even talking about ‘songwriters on songwriting’ – is that it opens up questions about canons, and bodies of work, and weighty questions about artistry.
In the context of the ideas held on ‘Devourer’ – where content is to be consumed and is transactional – it too feels like a topic ripe for exploration, especially when you’re 30 years deep into your career, and your albums live within that shared world or narrative. Adding to the body of work feels fraught with pitfalls. Nevertheless, the intention behind Cursive remains unchanged.
“The way I think of it is that every time I sit down to write a record, you’re in some way always trying to write the best thing that you can,” says Tim. “Sometimes you’ll be like, ‘OK, I’m looking to write something really moody’, and you know it won’t be a crowd-pleaser, but you also know that you have something important to express when you do it.
“Like, we’re not trying to write a hit single. A hit single is just a great song you wrote, so it’s not like we’re trying to do anything commercial – but that’s tricky too because we want to be commercial, but it has to be on our own terms.”
“As a teenager, I was basically listening to British pop like Squeeze and The Cure, and everything was melodic and accessible and catchy. Later in life, I got into hardcore and metal”
This notion is somewhat at odds with the idea of playing a greatest hits set on the main stage of a festival, but what’s refreshing about Cursive is how even those old greatest hits get a new interpretation, either through gentle tweaks or the greater sound created by the expanded line-up of the band. You get the feeling Tim would love to lean heavily into ‘Devourer’ – it has its fair share of rippers, after all – but there’s a balance to be struck between teasing some of the stronger moments and ‘giving the fans what they want’.
But there’s also a duality at play here, too; since the 2020 release of ‘Get Fixed’, the band has celebrated the anniversary of their landmark album, ‘Domestica’, meaning a re-evaluation of a fan favourite – something that took place during the writing of ‘Devourer’. Unsurprisingly, it’s no surprise such work bled into the writing of the new record. As such, timelines are blurring in interesting ways for the band and fans alike.
“I’m fairly convinced that [revisiting ‘Domestica’] had an influence on ‘Devourer’. I don’t think of ‘Devourer’ as sounding like a ‘Domestica’ record at all, but I think spending so much time with ‘Domestica’ at that time helped me get a better understanding of what our catalogue is. If you take it as an overview, you might not see it, but if you dig in… It’s like seeing the forest for the trees.
“During the pandemic I was listening to tonnes of stuff, though. We all had free time, and I was just digging into catalogues and going on daily walks. Pedro the Lion front to back, old Peter Gabriel, Genesis, all that stuff. Amongst all that, I revisited every record I’ve ever made, and that’s something I’d never done before. And it was really helpful in giving me a better sense of who we are. And that’s something the listener has an advantage in – they’re like, ‘Oh, I listen to the Cursive catalogue regularly’ – they know it better than I do!
“It was good for me to recognise that, especially with ‘Vitriola’ and ‘Get Fixed’ and even ‘I Am Gemini’ – even though we’re all proud of those records – is that we did the opposite of what usually happens. As a teenager, I was basically listening to British pop like Squeeze and The Cure, and everything was melodic and accessible and catchy. Later in life, I got into hardcore and metal, and so for the last 15 years, having an outlet like Cursive, I just leaned into the heavier stuff. It was like, ‘God, we can be like this’.
“But I think ‘Devourer’ is like a course-correction thing – I don’t know if that’s even the right way to put it – because there’s no right or wrong way about how Cursive should be. And listening to the older stuff, I was reminded of that. With ‘Devourer’, it was a reminder that Cursive is not a genre. Cursive isn’t heavy, it’s not light, it’s not pop.”
It’s a telling response; Cursive remain outliers, genre-wise, but have albums that are fiercely adored, even though they sound little alike – particularly ‘Domestica’ and the ‘Ugly Organ’ – the former a brooding monolith with outbursts of emotion, the latter a freewheeling fairytale. After that, their catalogue is a splatter of sounds and emotions that run the gamut of indie rock, post-hardcore, folk, and emo.
For the most part, they’ve successfully brought the audience – no matter where they’ve joined – along for the journey, even if those two records are the ones fans cherish most. And this again, in some way, brings us back to the theme of ‘Devourer’. At what point does art exist (or cease to exist) in a commercial world? Not to get too philosophical, but what’s the point of making art if you then have to sell it? Nothing exists in a vacuum, and there’s a demand for the next hit single. So, where does a career band like Cursive fit into this? Are they purely now existing in a place of nostalgia, or does Tim Kasher still have something important and valid to say? (Spoiler alert, he does).
“That’s the point,” he says. “That’s why we’re still putting out records. Like, that is literally the point. What are we? We’re a band of songwriters – and the scope of that hasn’t changed since the first record, and I don’t know how to do it any other way.
“With ‘Devourer’, it’s been nearly 30 years since we started, and we’ve had a good experience with the record. People seem to be taking it seriously… We’ve heard people say this is your best record, which to us is astonishing, especially after nine records.
“But we take it all in our stride. We’re still that same blue-collar band, you know…”
Bad Moves’ album ‘Wearing Out the Refrain’ is out now.
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